CS Research Talk: Helping Users to Authenticate Securely

Speaker: Dr. Peter Mayer, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

Monday August 26

10:30 am

SEH, 2000

Authenticating as legitimate user is a ubiquitous task in everybody's daily digital life. Yet, user authentication is associated with a variety of usability and security issues, causing strain and risk for users. In particular text passwords are notoriously known for associated insecure behavior. This insecure behavior is to a substantial degree caused by challenges stemming from usability barriers, users' misconceptions about password security, or password requirements that demand impossible tasks from users. This talk gives an overview of possible solutions to some of these challenges, including effective password security awareness materials, enabling automated password changes on websites using password managers, shoulder-surfing resistant text password entry on gamepads, and secure password storage in portfolio authentication settings.

Bio

Peter Mayer is a doctoral researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the SECUSO Research Group of Prof. Dr. Melanie Volkamer. His research focuses on enabling secure and usable authentication for users. Research topics include information security awareness and education, shoulder-surfing resistance of authentication schemes, automated password change on the web, and decision support for developers of authentication schemes.