Importance

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Abstract

A query directed password scheme is disclosed that employs attack-resistant questions having answers that generally cannot be correlated with the user using online searching techniques, such as user opinions, trivial facts, or indirect facts. During an enrollment phase, the user is presented with a pool of questions from which the user must select a subset of such questions to answer. Information extraction techniques optionally ensure that the selected questions and answers cannot be correlated with the user. A security weight can optionally be assigned to each selected question. The selected questions should optionally meet predefined criteria for topic distribution. During a verification phase, the user is challenged with a random subset of the questions that the user has previously answered and answers these questions until a level of security for a given application is exceeded as measured by the number of correct questions out of the number of questions asked. Security may be further improved by combining the query directed password protocol with one or more additional factors such as Caller ID that assure that the questions are likely asked only to the registered user.

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First Claim