Proposing Android Unlocking Pin (AUP) as an Alternative to Traditional Alphanumeric Password

Security is the foremost concern of every industry in the world today. One of the best ways of hacking into a computer system is brute forcing. And this has become faster and easy to do with advancement in technology. Text-based passwords are still the most popular and most commonly used form of authentication even though the requirements for a good password are still increasing. Several researches into text-based passwords have shown that the best ones are those that are completely random without any sequence or pattern to them. However, this makes it difficult to remember. Well-documented research has shown that it is easier to remember an image than words, hence the adage “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Even though there are good policies for text-based passwords, the unpredictability of users’ attitudes and behavior has most of the time rendered these policies inefficient. The common trade-off for the complexity of text-based passwords is recallability. Most users would prefer to use a password they can easily remember than a complex one that they can easily forget. One of the proposed alternatives to text-based passwords is graphical passwords. There are several schemes that have been proposed but are still unpopular. This paper proposes the use of the android unlocking pin based on the behavior of users. Also this paper proposes ways to improve this scheme and options of bringing it at par with the current minimum requirements of a good text-based password.  Categories and Subject Descriptors Security and privacy → Graphical / visual passwords; Security requirements; General Terms  Design, Security, Human Factors, Theory, Verification Keywords AUP, authentication, graphical passwords,