1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a password authenticating apparatus that performs authentication by a password input.
2. Description of the Related Art
In information equipment such as a cash dispenser and an information terminal that is set up at a convenience store, one that inputs a password using a software keyboard to perform individual authentication is frequently used. However, regarding the password input using the software keyboard, it has been pointed out that there is a danger in which a third person peeks into the password at an inputting time, and an input device for dealing with such a problem is proposed.
For example, there is an input apparatus that randomly changes a position of each numeric key of a numeric keypad displayed on a screen when a personal identification number input screen is displayed (Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2000-99801).
However, the following problem is found out in the input method that randomly changes the key arrangement of the software keyboard at the password putting time. For example, in the case where the software keyboard having the same character types as those of the general keyboard is used, searching a key that an operator desires to input from the changed key arrangement becomes extremely burdensome to the operator since the number of character types is large. Moreover, in the case when only numeric characters input using the numeric keypad is allowed in order to reduce the operator's load, since te number of character types that forms the password is limited to the small number of character types, the effect of a peck prevention measure will be reduced and the safety of password will be decreased.