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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Rutgers engineering researchers explore the security and memorability of free-form gestures as passwords.
As more people use smart phones or tablets to pay bills, make purchases, store personal information and even control access to their houses, the need for robust password security has become more critical than ever. A new Rutgers University study shows that free-form gestures — sweeping fingers in shapes across the screen of a smart phone or tablet — can be used to unlock phones and grant access to apps. These gestures are less likely than traditional typed passwords or newer "connect-the-dots" grid exercises to be observed and reproduced by "shoulder surfers" who spy on users to gain unauthorized access. "All it takes to steal a password is a quick eye," said Janne Lindqvist, one of the leaders of the project and an assistant professor in the School of Engineering's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "With all the personal and transactional information we have on our phones today, improved mobile security is becoming increasingly critical."

Lindqvist believes this is the first study to explore free-form gestures as passwords. The researchers will publish their findings in June as part of the proceedings of MobiSys '14, a premier international conference in mobile computing.

In developing a secure solution to this problem, Lindqvist and the other researchers from Rutgers and collaborators from Max-Planck Institute for Informatics, including Antti Oulasvirta, and University of Helsinki studied the practicality of using free-form gestures for access authentication. With the ability to create any shape in any size and location on the screen, the gestures had an inherent appeal as passwords. Since users create them without following a template, the researchers predicted these gestures would allow for greater complexity than grid-based gestures offer.

http://soe.rutgers.edu/story/are-squiggly-lines-future-password-security [rutgers.edu]

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