  Nowadays, user authentication is one of the important topics in information
security. Strong textbased password schemes could provide with certain degree
of security. However, the fact that strong passwords are difficult to memorize
often leads their owners to write them down on papers or even save them in a
computer file. Graphical authentication has been proposed as a possible
alternative solution to textbased authentication, motivated particularly by the
fact that humans can remember images better than text. In recent years, many
networks, computer systems and Internet based environments try used graphical
authentication technique for their users authentication. All of graphical
passwords have two different aspects which are usability and security.
Unfortunately none of these algorithms were being able to cover both of these
aspects at the same time. In this paper, we described eight recognition based
authentication algorithms in terms of their drawbacks and attacks. In the next
section, the usability standards from ISO and the related attributes for
graphical user authentication usability are discussed. The related attack
patterns for graphical user authentication security part are also discussed.
Finally, a comparison table of all recognition based algorithms is presented
based on ISO and attack patterns standards.
