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Pattern Unlock is one in a family of graphical passwords used on smart mobile devices. They were proposed as an alternative to PIN and Password, as a result of a study [2] that showed better human memorability of visuals words than textual. Researchers have made several attempts to analyse and quantify the security of Pattern Unlock. However, only a few studies have been done on human characteristics and the correlation to choice of patterns.In this paper, we investigated the Android Pattern Unlock authentication and presents a comprehensive analysis of user pattern characteristics and strength of patterns generated by users. We extended the analysis by looking in-depth into gender and also different Android operated devices were looked into to get the lock-out and wait time, to lay the foundations of a practical security framework.Our results (125 participants) indicated how users weakly choose their patterns by simply embedding and reusing patterns that are alphabetic or numeric-like, and having a strength score less than 27bits of entropy. The results highlighted the need to make users more aware and conscious when choosing their authentication patterns.

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