A Study into the Usability and Security Implications of Text and Image Based Challenge Questions in the Context of Online Examination

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Online examinations are an integral component of online learning environments and research studies have identified academic dishonesty as a critical threat to the credibility of such examinations. Academic dishonesty exists in many forms. Collusion is seen as a major security threat, wherein a student invites a third party for help or to impersonate him or her in an online examination. This work aims to investigate the authentication of students using text-based and image-based challenge questions. The study reported in this paper involved 70 online participants from nine countries completing a five week online course and simulating an abuse case scenario. The results of a usability analysis suggested that i) image-based questions are more usable than text-based questions (p < 0.01) and ii) using a more flexible data entry method increased the usability of text-based questions (p < 0.01). An impersonation abuse scenario was simulated to test the influence of sharing with different database sizes. The findings revealed that iii) an increase in the number of questions shared for impersonation increased the success of an impersonation attack and the results showed a significant linear trend (p < 0.01). However, the number of correct answers decreased when the attacker had to memorize and answer the questions in an invigilated online examination or their response to questions was timed. The study also revealed that iv) an increase in the size of challenge question database decreased the success of an impersonation attack (p < 0.01).Peer reviewe

A Dynamic Profile Questions Approach to Mitigate Impersonation in Online Examinations

© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Online examinations are an integral component of many online learning environments, which face many security challenges. Collusion is seen as a major security threat to such examinations, when a student invites a third party to impersonate or abet in a test. This work aims to strengthen the authentication of students via the use of dynamic profile questions. The study reported in this paper involved 31 online participants from five countries over a five-week period. The results of usability and security analysis are reported. The dynamic profile questions were more usable than both the text-based and image-based questions (p < 0.01). An impersonation abuse scenario was simulated using email and mobile phone. The impersonation attack via email was not successful, however, students were able to share answers to dynamic profile questions with a third party impersonator in real time, which resulted in 93% correct answers. The sharing of information via phone took place in real time during an online test and the response time of an impersonator was significantly different (p < 0.01) than a student. The study also revealed that a response time factor may be implemented to identify and report impersonation attacks.Peer reviewe

Analysing security and privacy issues of using e-mail address as identity

Nowadays, many websites allow or require users to use their e-mail addresses either as identity or for other purposes. Although username-based identity problems resulting from users’ behaviours have been a research focus for quite some time, the serious issues of using e-mail address as identity and the associated online behaviours of users have not been well investigated. In this paper, we discuss and analyse security and privacy problems resulting from using e-mail address as identity via well-designed user behaviour survey and by investigating websites’ design schemes. Our results illustrate that using e-mail address as identity poses high security and privacy risks. This is mainly because of the multiple usages of e-mail addresses and users’ improper online habits. Moreover, we discuss drawbacks of existing solutions for e-mail address as identity and related password problems, and present potential solutions that may be used to secure online identity management systems in future

An Empirical Study of Authentication Methods to Secure E-learning System Activities Against Impersonation Fraud

Studies have revealed that securing Information Systems (IS) from intentional misuse is a concern among organizations today. The use of Web-based systems has grown dramatically across industries including e-commerce, e-banking, e-government, and e learning to name a few. Web-based systems provide e-services through a number of diverse activities. The demand for e-learning systems in both academic and non-academic organizations has increased the need to improve security against impersonation fraud. Although there are a number of studies focused on securing Web-based systems from Information Systems (IS) misuse, research has recognized the importance of identifying suitable levels of authenticating strength for various activities. In e-learning systems, it is evident that due to the variation in authentication strength among controls, a ‘one size fits all’ solution is not suitable for securing diverse e-learning activities against impersonation fraud. The main goal of this study was to use the framework of the Task-Technology Fit (TTF) theory to conduct an exploratory research design to empirically investigate what levels of authentication strength users perceive to be most suitable for activities in e-learning systems against impersonation fraud. This study aimed to assess if the ‘one size fits all’ approach mainly used nowadays is valid when it comes to securing e-learning activities from impersonation fraud. Following the development of an initial survey instrument (Phase 1), expert panel feedback was gathered for instrument validity using the Delphi methodology. The initial survey instrument was adjusted according to feedback (Phase 2). The finalized Web-based survey was used to collect quantitative data for final analyses (Phase 3). This study reported on data collected from 1,070 e-learners enrolled at a university. Descriptive statistics was used to identify what e-learning activities perceived by users and what users perceived that their peers would identify to have a high potential for impersonation. The findings determined there are a specific set of e-learning activities that high have potential for impersonation fraud and need a moderate to high level of authentication strength to reduce the threat. Principal Component Analysis was used to identify significant components of authentication strength to be suitable against the threats of impersonation for e-learning activities