Multi Factor Authentication using Steganography and One Time Password

Abstract

Traditional login based Password Schemes are vulnerable to several attacks. So image based passwords are introduced where it is also suffers from shoulder surfing attack. In order to overcome these attacks we are using steganography which combines both the text based password and also image as a password. In this method the carrier file is used as a password. In this the user selects an Image and writes a pin no into the image using steganography and it is encrypted, and then made Hash. The hash is used as a password and the pin number hidden in the image is also used as a password. Whenever the user login, the user is provided with a One Time Password (OTP), this OTP is sent directly to the user mobile. When the user forgot the pin number he uses his image password to retrieve the pin number. The pin number is directly mailed to the users registered Email ID. The user can retrieve the image if it was lost or damaged or modified using his pin number. This paper provides a study of how a mobile phone is adopted as security token. It starts with discussing the necessity of multi-factor authentication and the use of mobile phone as security token to generate OTP with the help of hashing algorithms. Even though hash functions are carefully designed to satisfy the required security properties, they are still vulnerable to collision attacks.