Bingo card authentication systems

A bingo card is a wallet-size card that contains a grid of randomly generated rows and columns. When a user logs in using their ID and password, they are prompted for a random cell in the grid. The user then enters the correct combination of numbers and letters in that cell and is granted access.

This is a form of two-factor authentication because it uses two factors: something you have (the card) and something you know (user ID and password). These cards can contain any number of rows and columns, or cells as long as they fit comfortably on it. The general rule is the more cells provided, the more potential combinations, and therefore the more secure the card is.

Bingo cards are attractive because they are cheap, easy to produce and easy to replace. Additionally, unlike smart cards or tokens they do not require a chip or internal mechanism to function. However, these cards do have a drawback. After some time, depending on the number of cells, the combinations can become stale and, just like an old or weak password, eventually can be cracked. A patient attacker could use keystroke logging techniques to sniff out the user's creditionals to figure out the patterns. Once the patterns are pieced together, the combinations will be revealed.

While bingo cards haven't been widely adopted, they are interesting and easy-to-implement two-factor authentication tools. To learn more about them, you can research two products that are currently on the market, Entrust's IdentityGuard and TriCipher's Armored Credential System.

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More Information

Visit this Learning Guide to learn more about other authentication options.

Review the strengths and weaknesses of two-factor authentication here.

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