An Investigation of the Usability of a Game for Secure Wireless Device Association

Securely associating, or“pairing,”wireless devices via out-ofband communication channels is a well established approach. Unfortunately, this technique is prone to human errors that lead to security problems such as man-in-the-middle attacks. To address this problem by motivating users, a previous proposal suggested the use of computer games. Games can make the pairing process rewarding, thus potentially improving its usability and security. This paper presents a usability evaluation of a proposed pairing system called “Alice Says” that achieves pairing based on the memory game Simon. The results of our study indicate that users do indeed find the pairing game to be fun, as previously hypothesized. However, the slow execution speed of Alice Says prompts the need for faster game-based approaches to pairing.