A Virtual Password Scheme to Protect Passwords

—People enjoy the convenience of on-line services, but online environments may bring many risks. In this paper, we discuss how to prevent users’ passwords from being stolen by adversaries. We propose a virtual password concept involving a small amount of human computing to secure users’ passwords in on-line environments. We adopt user-determined randomized linear generation functions to secure users’ passwords based on the fact that a server has more information than any adversary does. We analyze how the proposed scheme defends against phishing, key logger, and shoulder-surfing attacks. To the best of our knowledge, our virtual password mechanism is the first one which is able to defend against all three attacks together.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICC
• Authors: Ming Lei, Yang Xiao, Susan V. Vrbsky, Chung-Chih Li, Li Liu
• Keywords: Communications, ICC 2008, Password, Virtual Password, Virtual Password Concept