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SPW
2004
Springer

One User, Many Hats; and, Sometimes, No Hat: Towards a Secure Yet Usable PDA

13 years 9 months ago
One User, Many Hats; and, Sometimes, No Hat: Towards a Secure Yet Usable PDA
How can we design a PDA that is at the same time secure and usable? In current implementations the two properties are mutually exclusive. Because normal users find password entry inconvenient, the balance usually shifts away from security, leaving the PDA vulnerable if lost or stolen. We begin by envisaging what an ideal PDA authentication mechanism might look like and by carefully examining alternatives to passwords such as tokens and biometrics. We then expose another aspect of the security vs. usability problem. In many cases, when we turn on our PDA, we only access functionality (dictionary, calculator, web browser. . . ) that requires no access to private data stored in the machine; why, then, should we pay the usability penalty of authentication in such cases? Moreover, we may want to grant another person temporary access to such “harmless” functionality, but without being forced to grant them unrestricted access to the whole machine. To solve this problem we describe a syst...
Frank Stajano
Added 02 Jul 2010
Updated 02 Jul 2010
Type Conference
Year 2004
Where SPW
Authors Frank Stajano
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