3D map - the future of online passwords

Traditional passwords are no longer safe from the proliferation of software that logs characters from the keyboard (keyloggers), so security experts are developing new access methods: clicking on 3D maps.

Users can choose any coordinates on the 3D map of a strange city as a password instead of the highly detectable character string today.Photo: NYTours.

Instead of setting a password with a character string, the user will be provided with a 3D satellite map and they will select any coordinate value to use as the access code. To log in to a personal account, they just need to enlarge the map and click on that secret location without any hacker or malicious code being able to track it.

"To make sure, you should not choose a map that is familiar as the city where you are but should find an area you have never been to. The location of the coordinates can contain 10 numbers of longitude and 10 numbers. so you will have a very strong password with 20 mysterious numbers , " Catalin Cosoi, director of BitDefender's security research division, shared in the Network Security Conference in New York ( USA) last week.

According to BitDefender Labs, the method of using zoomed-in maps allows against password-detection programs using dictionaries as well as disabling mouse coordinates detection software. Viruses can know which points are clicked by users, but it cannot determine which maps are being searched as well as how many times they are zoomed in.

Cosoi said it was BitDefender's groundbreaking invention and the company is negotiating with 15 major Internet companies such as Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Baidu, eBay, Salesforce . to jointly implement the idea.