Secure Virtual Keypad for Smartphones against Shoulder Surfing Attacks

Abstract

Currently, cryptographic security of financial applications that run on mobile devices is considered
a main feature. Thus, financial institutions develop novel secure solutions that are cryptographically
secure. However, in terms of social engineering attacks, financial applications are vulnerable because
most mobile devices have a display screen that is easily visible to attackers; they can easily look over
your shoulder to see your password as you input it using the screen keypad. Therefore, we focused
on securing the mobile keypad against shoulder surfing attacks. In this paper, we modified the previous
4-color based keypad that supports color blindness, and made it more secure against multiple
attackers.