Communicating Shoulder Surfing Attacks to Users

Abstract

Since mobile interaction takes place in almost every context, shoulder surfing attacks are becoming more and more a threat to user's privacy. While several approaches exist to prevent these attacks for the authentication process, protecting the actual interaction has not yet been in the main focus of research. In this work, we present the concept of communicating shoulder surfing attacks to the user. This should create awareness on the user side and help preventing this type of privacy invasion. We present out shoulder surfer detection mobile application, called DSSytem, and report on a focus group that helped to design this system. We also report on the results of a user study in which we compare four different notification methods, namely, vibro-tactile, front LED, on-screen icon, and video preview feedback. Vibro-tactile feedback results in the lowest reaction time of the participants and is also favoured throughout the follow-up semi-structured interviews.