Open Access

ARTICLE

A Secure Authentication Indexed Choice-Based Graphical Password Scheme for Web Applications and ATMs

by Sameh Zarif^1,2,*, Hadier Moawad², Khalid Amin², Abdullah Alharbi³, Wail S. Elkilani⁴, Shouze Tang⁵, Marian Wagdy⁶

1 Artificial Intelligence Department, Faculty of Artificial Intelligence, Egyptian Russian University, Menoufia, 32511, Egypt
2 Information Technology Department, Faculty of Computers and Information, Menoufia University, Menoufia, 32511, Egypt
3 Computer Science Department, Community College, King Saud University, Riyadh, 11362, Saudi Arabia
4 College of Applied Computer Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, 19676, Saudi Arabia
5 School of Communication and Information Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, 400065, China
6 Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Computers and Information, Tanta University, Tanta, 31527, Egypt

* Corresponding Authors: Sameh Zarif. Email: ,

Computer Systems Science and Engineering 2025, 49, 79-98. https://doi.org/10.32604/csse.2024.057439

Received 17 August 2024; Accepted 31 October 2024; Issue published 03 January 2025

Abstract

Authentication is the most crucial aspect of security and a predominant measure employed in cybersecurity. Cloud computing provides a shared electronic device resource for users via the internet, and the authentication techniques used must protect data from attacks. Previous approaches failed to resolve the challenge of making passwords secure, memorable, usable, and time-saving. Graphical Password (GP) is still not widely utilized in reality because consumers suffer from multiple login stages. This paper proposes an Indexed Choice-Based Graphical Password (ICGP) scheme for improving the authentication part. ICGP consists of two stages: registration and authentication. At the registration stage, the user registers his/her data user name a number called Index Number (IN), and chooses an image from a grid of images. After completing the registration, ICGP gives the user a random unique number (UNo) to be a user ID. At the authentication stage, the user chooses a different image from the grid based on the random appearance of the registered image dimensions on the grid plus the registered Index Number. ICGP password is a combination of three factors; user’s name, UNo, and any image. According to the experiments, the proposed ICGP has achieved great improvements when compared to prior methods. The ICGP has increased the possible password numbers from 9.77e + 6 to 3.74e + 30, the password space from 1.20e + 34 to 1.37e + 84, and decreased the password entropy from 7.16e − 7 to 8.26e − 30.

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Keywords

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