Graphical Password Authentication Techniques: A Review

In todays IT world, for the computer and information security the user authentication and authorization play a significant role. For this authentication a password is very important aspect. The conventional method of password is a strong textual password which is also called as alphanumeric password. But because of the problem of memorability, users writing them down on the pieces of papers or kept the password which can be easily memorable. Because of this it is vulnerable to various attacks like brute force, dictionary attack, social engineering, keylogger, spyware, guessing. So to overcome this limitation of textual password, a new password technique is developed which is a Graphical Password. In this as name indicates the images are used as a password. Also psychological study says that images can be easily remembered by human beings as compare to text. Generally password has two essential aspects security and usability. In Graphical Password, the clicking and dragging activities are performed on the images rather than text. So it can be best alternative to the textual password. This paper will explore the strengths and limitations of various graphical password techniques on the basis of security and usability metrics.