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The Benefits of Understanding Passwords
Markus Jakobsson, Paypal; Mayank Dhiman, PEC University of Technology
We study passwords from the perspective of how they are generated, with the goal of better understanding how to distinguish good passwords from bad ones. Based on reviews of large quantities of passwords, we argue that users produce passwords using a small set of rules and types of components, both of which we describe herein. We build a parser of passwords, and show how this can be used to gain a better understanding of passwords, as well as to block weak passwords.
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title = {The {Benefits} of Understanding Passwords},
booktitle = {7th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security (HotSec 12)},
year = {2012},
address = {Bellevue, WA},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotsec12/workshop-program/presentation/Jakobsson},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}