Three-Dimensional Password for More Secure Authentication

Current authentication systems suffer from many weaknesses. Textual passwords are commonly used; however, users do not follow their requirements. Users tend to choose meaningful words from dictionaries, which make textual passwords easy to break and vulnerable to dictionary or brute force attacks. Many available graphical passwords have a password space that is less than or equal to the textual password space. Smart cards or tokens can be stolen. Many biometric authentications have been proposed; however, users tend to resist using biometrics because of their intrusiveness and the effect on their privacy. Moreover, biometrics cannot be revoked. In this paper, we present and evaluate our contribution, i.e., the 3-D password. The 3-D password is a multifactor authentication scheme. To be authenticated, we present a 3-D virtual environment where the user navigates and interacts with various objects. The sequence of actions and interactions toward the objects inside the 3-D environment constructs the user's 3-D password. The 3-D password can combine most existing authentication schemes such as textual passwords, graphical passwords, and various types of biometrics into a 3-D virtual environment. The design of the 3-D virtual environment and the type of objects selected determine the 3-D password key space.