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NomadiKey: User authentication for smart devices based on nomadic keys
Author(s) -
Souza Artur,
Cunha Ítalo,
B Oliveira Leonardo
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
international journal of network management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1099-1190
pISSN - 1055-7148
DOI - 10.1002/nem.1998
Subject(s) - usability , computer science , authentication (law) , computer security , multi factor authentication , lightweight extensible authentication protocol , authentication protocol , human–computer interaction
Summary The growing importance of smart devices calls for effective user authentication mechanisms. We argue that state‐of‐the‐art authentication mechanisms are either vulnerable to known attacks or do not meet usability needs. To address this problem, we designed NomadiKey, a user‐to‐device authentication mechanism based on nomadic keyboard keys. NomadiKey increases security level by placing keys at different screen coordinates each time it is activated. Besides, NomadiKey preserves usability by maintaining the traditional relative position of keys. To increase security even further, we also design an extension to NomadiKey that uses out‐of‐band channels to thwart shoulder‐surfing adversaries. We compare NomadiKey with other user authentication mechanisms under different attacks using statistical models and simulation. We also evaluate NomadiKey's usability with 20 users. Our results show that NomadiKey increases security compared to widely deployed PIN authentication with limited impact on authentication times.