Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security

SOUPS Impact Award

On the 10 year anniversary of SOUPS, we have instituted a SOUPS Impact Award.

The SOUPS Impact Award is to be presented every third year to the authors of a SOUPS conference paper that has had a significant impact on usable security and privacy research and practice. The winner of the award was announced at the SOUPS conference.

To be eligible, a paper should have been published no earlier than 5 and no later than 10 years before the year in which the award is presented. For example, for the presentation at SOUPS 2014, the paper should have been published at SOUPS 2005 through SOUPS 2009.

The selection committee will focus on a paper's impact as judged by influence in the research community, a community of practice, industry, and/or social impact resulting from the work. A public citation for the award will be placed on the SOUPS website.

The initial selection pool is drawn from the top 10 most cited SOUPS papers of the eligibility period, excluding previous winners. The most highly cited paper need not be the winner, because citation counts are not necessarily accurate, and because citations are not the sole measure of impact. Instead, the winner will be selected by the Selection Committee after a vigorous online discussion.

Selection Committee. The Awards Selection Committee shall consist of between 5 and 15 current or former program committee members. Members will be appointed by the selection committee chair(s). To be eligible, a committee member may not be an author or co-author of one of the initial selection pool.

The committee co-chairs shall adjudicate conflicts of interest, appointing substitutes to the committee as necessary.

SOUPS 2014 Impact Award

The following papers formed the initial selection pool for the SOUPS 2014 Impact Award, with their year of SOUPS publication, and the citation count that qualified them. Committee discussion narrowed the selection to a short list of finalists, from which one winner was selected. The finalists and winner were announced at SOUPS 2014.

• Reducing shoulder-surfing by using gaze-based password entry, M Kumar, T Garfinkel, D Boneh, T Winograd (2007, 124)
• A second look at the usability of click-based graphical passwords, S Chiasson, R Biddle, PC van Oorschot (2007, 135)
• Anti-phishing phil: the design and evaluation of a game that teaches people not to fall for phish, S Sheng, B Magnien, P Kumaraguru (2007, 144)[Finalist]
• Passpet: convenient password management and phishing protection, KP Yee, K Sitaker (2006, 151)
• Usability of CAPTCHAs or usability issues in CAPTCHA design, J Yan, AS El Ahmad (2008, 155) [Winner]
• Web wallet: preventing phishing attacks by revealing user intentions, M Wu, RC Miller, G Little (2006, 157)
• Decision strategies and susceptibility to phishing, JS Downs, MB Holbrook, LF Cranor (2006, 168)
• Password management strategies for online accounts, S Gaw, EW Felten(2006, 185) [Finalist]
• Authentication using graphical passwords: effects of tolerance and image choice, S Wiedenbeck, J Waters, JC Birget, A Brodskiy (2005, 266) [Finalist]
• The battle against phishing: Dynamic security skins, R Dhamija, JD Tygar (2005, 403) [Finalist]

Winner: Usability of CAPTCHAs or usability issues in CAPTCHA design
by Jeff Yan and Ahmad El Ahmad
Published at SOUPS 2008

This paper discusses usability issues that should be considered and addressed in the design of CAPTCHAs. Some of these issues are intuitive, but some others have subtle implications for robustness or security. The paper proposed a simple but novel framework for examining CAPTCHA usability. The framework proposed was instrumental in promoting a structured approach to CAPTCHA usability and security. It pulled together emerging knowledge of practice, added some useful insights, presented a thoughtful analysis, and systematized it into the "goto" paper for people trying to design CAPTCHAs. The framework from this paper still holds today, and the paper continues to be cited in studies.

2014 Impact Award Committee Members:

Ross Anderson
Simson Garfinkel (co-chair)
Cormac Herley
Markus Jakobsson
Brian LaMacchia
Heather Lipford
Andrew Patrick
Diana Smetters
Mary Ellen Zurko (co-chair)