Patent ID: 9514294
Filing Date: 2016-12-06
CPC Classification: G06F,H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method, said method comprising: in response to a successful login by a user, setting, by one or more processors of a computer system, a score equal to a positive number of credits to a user account of the user; after said setting the score, receiving, by the one or more processors, a login request, from the user, to log into a computing resource, said login request including a password and a user identifier of the user; comparing, by the one or more processors, the received password with a stored password to determine whether to grant the user access to the computing resource; responsive to determining that the received password does not match the stored password, determining, by the one or more processors, a total number of credits to deduct from the score, wherein said determining the total number of credits to deduct from the score comprises determining that the total number of credits to deduct from the score includes a first number of credits to deduct in response to a determination that the login request is a failed attempt by the user to login; deducting, by the one or more processors, the total number of credits from the score, which results in the score being an overall score; denying, by the one or more processors, the login request; and based on comparing the overall score with a threshold score, deciding, by the one or more processors, whether to lock the user and deny the user further access to the computing resource, wherein said determining the total number of credits to deduct from the score includes initializing the total number of credits to the first number of credits, and for each modifier of a plurality of modifiers: ascertaining whether, taking a determined value of the modifier into account, that the login request is more likely or not more likely to be from an attacker than from the user, wherein if said ascertaining ascertains that the login request is more likely or not more likely to be from the attacker than from the user then adding a second number of credits or a third number of credits, respectively, to the total number of credits to deduct from the score, wherein the second number of credits exceeds the third number of credits, and wherein the second and third number of credits are specific to the modifier, and wherein the plurality of modifiers are selected from the group consisting of: whether or not the password is from a trusted new location, whether or not at least a specified number of failed login attempts occurred with the password from trusted locations, whether or not the password complies with a specified character length, character set, and case sensitivity, whether or not the password is a dictionary of passwords that can be easily guessed, whether or not the password includes publicly available personal information, whether or not a location from which the user connects provides the user with Wi-Fi access in accordance with a new or unknown configuration, whether or not a client machine configuration from which the user logs into the user account is a new configuration, whether or not the password has been previously submitted multiple times in succession, whether or not the user has used the password within a specified acceptable time period, whether or not the password has been a specified number of times, whether or not the password matches a pattern found in previous password attempts, and combinations thereof.