Abstract or Summary:
This paper explores authentication techniques based on pictures as a possible solution to the most important problems concerning traditional passwords. The aim of this work is to bring together the technical (cryptological) and non-technical (psychological) awareness into the research on passwords. Security issues of any authentication mechanism (relying on knowledge) should not be considered without analysis of the human factor - since the users’ human nature was identified as a source of major weaknesses of conventional authentication. Several issues of security and possibility of practical application were discussed in the paper. In the first place the statistically significant superiority of picture passwords over alphanumerical ones was presented. Then, it was shown that the crucial weaknesses of the picture passwords follow less from pictures locations and more from their meaning and ability to be recognized. Moreover, the techniques leading to resistance to ‘key logging’ and ‘mouse tracking’ were discussed. Finally, methods guaranteeing that users choose dissimilar, personalized and cryptographically strong graphical passwords were proposed.