Grid Authentication: A Memorability and User Sentiment Study

Despite being one of the most crucial parts of online transactions, the most used authentication system, the username and password system, has shown to be weaker than ever. With the increase of processing power within computers, offline password attacks such as dictionary attacks, rainbow tables, and hash tables have become more effective against divulging account information from stolen databases. This has led to alternative solutions being proposed, such as logging in with a social media account or password managers, which do not replace the password entirely. Graphical alternatives have previously proposed, but none of them have become widely used. In a previous paper we proposed our own alternative called “Grid Authentication”, which would allow users to authenticate using a sequence of clicks on a colored Grid, shown to be resistant against offline password attacks. Now we have implemented and tested Grid Authentication’s memorability and recorded user sentiment data. Participants logged in using a newly created password, an 8-character password randomly generated for them, as well as used Grid Authentication scheme for three days each, once per day. We found that overall, Grid Authentication’s memorability was like a user chosen password, and far superior to the randomly generated 8-character password. We also observed that user’s overall sentiment towards Grid Authentication increased significantly after three days of regular use. Despite this, while sentiment over the system was overall positive, users perceived that they remembered the password more easily, perhaps given hints as to why alternative authentication types have not become widely used.