| dc.description.abstract | As we continue to learn and grow in an ever evolving technological age, we deepen our
understanding of the importance of authentication. There are many different types of
authentication, each exhibiting their own strengths and weaknesses. Each authentication
mechanism serves the same purpose: to verify a user’s identity. In this thesis, we explore
two authentication mechanisms aimed at helping users remember stronger authentication
tokens: one aimed at creating a secure, memorable token, and the other aimed at
strengthening a previous token (known as a password strengthening technique). The first
is GeoPassNotes, a geographic location-based authentication scheme. GeoPassNotes
requires users to select a location on a digital map and then annotate it in order to authenticate.
The combination of the location and the annotation is the authentication token.
GeoPassNotes allows users to select a location that is tied to a significant event / memory,
which is very memorable to that person. The other system we design and explore is
PassMod, a system designed to help users create more secure versions of their password.
This system separates itself from other password strengthening techniques because it
interprets and attempts to preserve the original meaning behind the user’s password. We
demonstrate that it is possible to create a more secure password without compromising
the memorability of the original password. Both GeoPassNotes and PassMod help users
produce a more secure, yet memorable authentication token. | en |
