Word Association Computer Passwords: The Effect of Formulation Techniques on Recall and Guessing Rates

Pond, Rachael; Podd, John; Bunnell, Julie; Henderson, Ronald D.

doi:10.1016/s0167-4048(00)07023-1

Cited by 38 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…However, they come with their own usability challenges [5]. Other proposed schemes for creating more secure passwords include system-generated passwords [17], fictional news headlines [14], and word associations [19], but such schemes have not yet proven to be sufficiently workable.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving text passwords through persuasion

Forget

Chiasson

Oorschot

et al. 2008

Proceedings of the 4th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security

110

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Password restriction policies and advice on creating secure passwords have limited effects on password strength. Influencing users to create more secure passwords remains an open problem. We have developed Persuasive Text Passwords (PTP), a text password creation system which leverages Persuasive Technology principles to influence users in creating more secure passwords without sacrificing usability. After users choose a password during creation, PTP improves its security by placing randomly-chosen characters at random positions into the password. Users may shuffle to be presented with randomly-chosen and positioned characters until they find a combination they feel is memorable. In this paper, we present an 83-participant user study testing four PTP variations. Our results show that the PTP variations significantly improved the security of users' passwords. We also found that those participants who had a high number of random characters placed into their passwords would deliberately choose weaker pre-improvement passwords to compensate for the memory load. As a consequence of this compensatory behaviour, there was a limit to the gain in password security achieved by PTP.

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Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving text passwords through persuasion

Forget

Chiasson

Oorschot

et al. 2008

Proceedings of the 4th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security

110

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Many of the deficiencies of password authentication systems arise from the limitations of human cognitive ability (Pond et al, 2000). If humans were not required to remember a password, a maximally secure password would be one with maximum length that could consist of a string of numbers, character, and symbols.…”

Section: An Investigative Study: Consumer Password Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Investigative Study: Consumers Password Choices on an E-Commerce Site

Medlin¹,

Cazier²

2005

Journal of Information Privacy and Security

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Goodpasswords are essential to the security of any e-commerce site. Unfortunately, consumers generally have the responsibility of creating their own passwords and oflen do so without guidance@om the web site or system administrator. One thing that is well known aboutpasswords is that consumers,do not create long or complicated passwords because they cannot remember them. Through an empirical analysis, this paper examines whether the passwords created by individuals on an e-commerce site fall into a predictable category and if individuals use either positive or negative password practices. Additionally, this paper addresses the issue of gender in relationship to password choice. The results of this study will show the actual password practices @om an e-commerce site currently in use. Results indicate that males sampled had slightly more secure passwords than females in the sample.

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“…Remembrance of passwords is one of the cornerstones of the current password-based authentication system [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Widespread usage of password protected systems accessed by the Internet has caused an explosion in the number of accounts per user and is revealing issues associated with users' difficulty in remembering passwords [32][33][34][35].…”

Section: Human Cognitive Abilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Password-based authentication: a system perspective

Conklin

Dietrich

Walz

2004

37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2004. Proceedings of The

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User authentication in computer systems has been a cornerstone of computer security for decades. The concept of a user id and password is a cost effective and efficient method of maintaining a shared secret between a user and a computer system. One of the key elements in the password solution for security is a reliance on human cognitive ability to remember the shared secret. In early computing days with only a few computer systems and a small select group of users, this model proved effective.With the advent of the Internet, e-commerce, and the proliferation of PCs in offices and schools, the user base has grown both in number and in demographic base.Individual users no longer have single passwords for single systems, but are presented with the challenge of remembering numerous passwords for numerous systems, from email, to web accounts, to banking and financial services. This paper presents a conceptual model depicting how users and systems work together in this function and examines the consequences of the expanding user base and the use of password memory aids.A system model of the risks associated with password-based authentication is presented from a user centric point of view including the construct of user password memory aids. When confronted with too much data to remember, users will develop memory aids to assist them in the task of remembering important pieces of information. These user password memory aids form a bridge between otherwise unconnected systems and have an effect on system level security across multiple systems interconnected by the user. A preliminary analysis of the implications of this user centric interconnection of security models is presented.

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Word Association Computer Passwords: The Effect of Formulation Techniques on Recall and Guessing Rates

Cited by 38 publications

References 14 publications

Improving text passwords through persuasion

Improving text passwords through persuasion

An Investigative Study: Consumers Password Choices on an E-Commerce Site

Password-based authentication: a system perspective

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