Colour-Based Scheme for Graphical User Authentication

With the increasing use of gadgets and technology, information stored online requires security (user, information, equipment and so on) to avoid damage, theft or crime. Information security is guaranteed by two mechanisms which are authentication and authorization. Textual passwords are vulnerable to attacks and has a difficult recall experience for strong passwords. Therefore, the aim of this study is to introduce colour as a graphical means of authenticating users to address some of the issues with textual passwords. The scheme was developed using colour wheel design partitioned into sixteen with various colours on the wheel. The color wheel is spun thrice by clicking and rotating the wheel (clockwise or anticlockwise) with the mouse. The color and deviation chosen are saved in the database for subsequent log-ins. The graphical authentication scheme was evaluated using security and usability. The evaluation of the security aspect of the password scheme was checked using password space and password entropy. For the CBGA (colour-based graphical authentication) scheme, the password space was calculated to be 191,102,976,000 passwords. When compared with other existing schemes like Passface with 6,561 passwords and GUABRR with 4,492,125,000 passwords, it can be said that CBGA is more secure based on password space. Also, the password entropy for the CBGA scheme was calculated to be 74.95, while that of Passface is 12.74 and that of GUABRR is 46.37. It can be deduced also that the CBGA is harder to guess than the existing graphical authentication schemes.