Researchers Develop App to Protect PINs and Passwords Against Shoulder-Surfing

No one likes a stranger standing close to them. And at least one of the reasons for that is to avoid “shoulder-surfing,” or the event when a stranger is looking over your shoulder to your phone or ATM to observe a financial transaction and catch a glimpse of your PIN or account number. But the good news is that researchers at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering are developing an application that will fight shoulder-surfing, whether it is done in person or via a camera.
The new technology is called “IllusionPIN,” and it works by using a hybrid-image keyboard that appears one way to the user and differently to an observer at a distance of three feet (or more). You, the user, being closest to the phone will see one configuration of numbers, while someone who may be trying to spy on you will see a completely different keypad.
The underlying technology of IllusionPIN blends one image of a keyboard configuration with high spatial frequency and a second with low spatial frequency. This produces two different images; or to be more precise, the image is dependant on the distance from which it is viewed.
Importantly, IllusionPIN reconfigures the keyboard each time the user logins.

Reference:
NYU Tandon School of Engineering via ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170822153610.htm)