Study and Analysis of Shoulder-Surfing Methods

Abstract

For accessing the ATMs for doing transactions or smartphones for accessing private information like emails, contact details, chatlogs, pictures, calendars, notes etc, PIN number is used as authentication for security purpose. To prevent the PIN number to be disclosed to the observer, it is necessary to not enter the actual PIN number but to enter a virtual PIN number which will confuse the observer about the original PIN number of the user. This virtual number will be different every time the users access the ATM, thus it will help to prevent the original PIN number to be disclosed to the observer. Several methods of shoulder surfing had been proposed from textual input to graphical input. Every method had its own merits and demerits and is useful according to the situation for a particular application. This paper gives a brief description of different types of textual and graphical shoulder surfing methods. The shoulder surfing methods discussed in this paper are analyzed with respect to time required to enter the virtual PIN number.