NomadiKey: User Authentication for Smart Devices based on Nomadic Keys

• Artur Souza
• Ítalo Cunha
• Leonardo B. Oliveira

Resumo

The growing importance of smart devices calls for effective user authentication mechanisms. In this paper, we argue that state-of-the-art authentication mechanisms are either vulnerable to known attacks or do not fully meet usability needs. To address this problem we design NomadiKey, a user-to-device authentication mechanism based on nomadic keyboard keys. NomadiKey increases security level by placing keys at different screen coordinates each time it is activated. Besides, NomadiKey preserves usability by maintaining the traditional relative position of keys. To increase security even further, we also design an extension to NomadiKey, called NomadiKey++, that employs out-of-band channels to protect the user from shoulder-surfing attacks.