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Bend Passwords: using gestures to authenticate on flexible devices

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Abstract

Upcoming mobile devices will have flexible displays, allowing us to explore alternate forms of user authentication. On flexible displays, users can interact with the device by deforming the surface of the display through bending. In this paper, we present Bend Passwords, a new type of user authentication that uses bend gestures as its input modality. We ran three user studies to evaluate the usability and security of Bend Passwords and compared it to PINs on a mobile phone. Our first two studies evaluated the creation and memorability of user-chosen and system-assigned passwords. The third study looked at the security problem of shoulder-surfing passwords on mobile devices. Our results show that bend passwords are a promising authentication mechanism for flexible display devices. We provide eight design recommendations for implementing Bend Passwords on flexible display devices.

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Notes

  1. Shoulder-surfing is an attack where malicious users learn a password by observing its entry on the device. These attacks are common in public places such as bus stops and coffee shops.

  2. Parts of this user study were published as a poster with an extended abstract [56].

  3. Parts of this user study were published as a poster with an extended abstract [57].

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Sonia Chiasson holds a Canada Research Chair in Human Oriented Computer Security and acknowledges funding for the Chair and Discovery Grants. Audrey Girouard also acknowledges funding for her Discovery Grant. The authors also acknowledge funding from NSERC ISSNet.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

    Sana Maqsood & Sonia Chiasson

  2. School of Information Technology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

    Audrey Girouard

Authors
  1. Sana Maqsood
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  2. Sonia Chiasson
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  3. Audrey Girouard
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sonia Chiasson.

Appendix

Appendix

See Fig. 12.

Fig. 12
figure 12

The set of bend gestures available on the flexible display prototype

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Maqsood, S., Chiasson, S. & Girouard, A. Bend Passwords: using gestures to authenticate on flexible devices. Pers Ubiquit Comput 20, 573–600 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-016-0928-6

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