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Overcoming problems with fraudulent/forgotten passwords, researchers at Newcastle University, UK, have created security software that assesses a user's drawings.
Password fraud continues to grow as the use of encoded letters and numbers for bank and online security accounts increases. Added to this is the problem of people often forgetting the different passwords they are using for different transactions. Now, researchers in the UK have discovered a way to use people’s doodles to improve their password security. Novel software created by scientists at Newcastle University asks users to input pictures instead of numbers or letters. Intelligent Drawings The Background Draw a Secret (BDAS) technology requires the user to draw an image into a grid, which they must input every time they want to use that system. The software encodes the ordered sequence of drawing, as well as number of times the pen is lifted, and recalls this information the next time that user lays out their picture. This system is a thousand times more secure than ordinary text codes, partly because of the difficulty of forging another’s doodles exactly, says the researchers. ‘So far we have never observed two of the exact same doodles in our experiments,’ said Dr Jeff Yan of the School of Computing Science at Newcastle, in an e-mail correspondence on 11 July. ‘An amazing thing with our BDAS system is that, although people might draw the same notion/concept as their passwords (for example, smiley faces and stick men), their doodles have different personal touches, and therefore, are different passwords in our system.’ Those being tested for the software also found pictures much easier to remember than words – a week after being asked to input a drawing, 95% of the BDAS test subjects were able to correctly re-draw that image within three attempts. Seeing Stars The secret to getting people to remember the image they drew comes from the use of a background picture. The technology offers users five images – stars, a map, a crowd, a plant and a playing card. A five-by-five grid appears over the image, which prompts the user to re-call their own free-form design, and where they should begin drawing. For instance, if the stars background is chosen, the person inputting may remember he or she began drawing a cross in the top right-hand corner, beginning with the biggest star. ‘We have tested a lot more images, and believe many everyday images would be good to use as the background image,’ says Yan. ‘Eventually, our system will be able to support a lot of background image choice, and we hope to encourage people to use their own images, since personalized pictures can add an additional level of security.’ The Newcastle team are hoping to commercialize this technology, and are currently seeking industry partners to invest in it.
The copyright of the article Drawing for Safety in Security/Antivirus Software is owned by Meagan Ellis. Permission to republish Drawing for Safety in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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