Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has shared more details about a new way of logging into a computer using an authentication system called a "picture password." This involves users selecting an image of choice, and then drawing out a series of gestures which are used for authenticating legitimate users. Gestures can consist of taps, lines or circles, and are drawn on top of the picture.

In the interest of security though, the picture password will serve as an additional log-in method rather than the primary method for authentication. Getting the picture password wrong five times will also lock a user out until the correct text password has been entered. Moreover, the picture password can only be used for local sessions, and will not be applicable for remote logins.

The challenge in putting the picture password together, according to Microsoft, has to do with the allowable margin of error. In a post on the Building Windows 8 blog, Zach Pace, a manager at Microsoft's You Centered Experience team, described how the system makes a final decision based on the cumulative errors in a set.

Pace wrote: "When the types, ordering, and directionality are all correct, we take a look at how far off each gesture was from the ones we've seen before, and decide if it's close enough to authenticate you."

Kenneth Weiss, the inventor of RSA's SecurID token, was critical of whether picture password can ever replace other methods of authentication. Though acknowledging that having picture passwords is better than nothing, he told Network World that "it's more like a Fisher-Price toy than a serious choice for secure computer access."

For more:
- check out this article at eWeek
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at Network World

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