A Comparison between Position-Based and Image-Based Multi-Layer Graphical User Authentication System

System security is very important, especially in the age that we live in. One of the ways to secure data is by creating a password that makes it difficult for unauthorized user to gain access to the system. However, what makes it difficult for the system to be attacked is directly dependent on approach used to create it, and how secured it is. Text based approach is the oldest authentication approach. It requires that the user supplies textual password in order to gain access to the system. However, this approach has shown a significant drawback and several vulnerabilities, one of which is the difficulty in recalling or remembering textual passwords. Several other attacks that textual passwords are vulnerable to include brute force attacks, shoulder spying, dictionary attacks etc. The introduction of graphical schemes made things a lot better. Graphical passwords make use of images. However, most graphical schemes are vulnerable to shoulder surfing attacks. In this research work, we developed two systems; A position-based multi-layer graphical user authentication system and an Image-based multi-layer graphical user authentication system. The reason behind this research work is to compare the two systems, and evaluate them based on three major performance metrics: (1) Security, (2) Reliability (3) Individual preference.