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CoverPad: A Leakage Resilient Password System on Touch-Screen Mobile Devices

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Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Computer Science ((BRIEFSCOMPUTER))

Abstract

Most prior research on improving leakage resilience of password entry focuses on desktop computers, while specific restrictions on mobile devices such as small screen size are usually not addressed. Meanwhile, additional features of mobile devices such as touch screen are not utilized in the traditional settings. In this chapter, we introduce an LRP scheme, which is named CoverPad, for password entry on touch-screen mobile devices. CoverPad leverages a temporary secure channel between user and touch screen which can be easily realized by placing a hand shielding gesture on the touch screen. The temporary secure channel is used to deliver a hidden message safely to a user for transforming each password symbol before entering it on the touch screen in an open channel. CoverPad is proven to be leakage resilient and it retains most of the benefits of legacy passwords. The usability of CoverPad is evaluated in a rigorous user study with realistic testing conditions including time pressure, distraction, and mental workload.

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Appendix: Statistical Test Results

Appendix: Statistical Test Results

The statistical test results for login time shown in Table 2.3 indicates that the same test condition may have difference impacts on the login time with different schemes, where the statistically significant results are marked with \(\star \).

Table 2.3 The statistical test results for login time (s)

The statistical test results on login accuracy are not shown since none of them are significant. This is due to the ceiling effect, as it is shown in Table 2.4, where each cell in this table shows the percentage of the participants who make no mistakes under certain test condition. In the worst case, 50. 0 % participants make no mistakes in all tests, which implies that the tests are not difficult enough to distinguish various test conditions with respect to the login accuracy. The CoverPad variants are easy to use even in the presence of time pressure, distraction, and mental workload. Note that this does not necessarily mean that these factors will not influence the login accuracy of other user authentication schemes.

Table 2.4 Evidence of ceiling effect in statistical tests on login accuracy

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Li, Y., Yan, Q., Deng, R.H. (2015). CoverPad: A Leakage Resilient Password System on Touch-Screen Mobile Devices. In: Leakage Resilient Password Systems. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17503-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17503-4_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17502-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17503-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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