The DOI matches its Crossref record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Guess Again (and Again and Again): Measuring Password Strength by Simulating Password-Cracking Algorithms
Abstract
Text-based passwords remain the dominant authentication method in computer systems, despite significant advancement in attackers' capabilities to perform password cracking. In response to this threat, password composition policies have grown increasingly complex. However, there is insufficient research defining metrics to characterize password strength and using them to evaluate password-composition policies. In this paper, we analyze 12,000 passwords collected under seven composition policies via an online study. We develop an efficient distributed method for calculating how effectively several heuristic password-guessing algorithms guess passwords. Leveraging this method, we investigate (a) the resistance of passwords created under different conditions to guessing, (b) the performance of guessing algorithms under different training sets, (c) the relationship between passwords explicitly created under a given composition policy and other passwords that happen to meet the same requirements, and (d) the relationship between guess ability, as measured with password-cracking algorithms, and entropy estimates. Our findings advance understanding of both password-composition policies and metrics for quantifying password security.
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Cites
A Mathematical Theory of Communication
Shannon, C. E. (1948) · Bell System Technical Journal · doi:10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x · Cited by 88,486
Massey, J. L. (2002) · Proceedings of 1994 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory · doi:10.1109/isit.1994.394764 · Cited by 463 · cited 2×
“Massey connects entropy with password strength by demonstrating that entropy provides a lower bound on the expected number of guesses to find a text [41].”
BackgroundUtility of human-computer interactions: toward a science of preference measurement
Toomim, M., Kriplean, T., Pörtner, C., & Landay, J. (2011) · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/1978942.1979277 · Cited by 64
Cited by
The Science of Guessing: Analyzing an Anonymized Corpus of 70 Million Passwords
Bonneau, J. (2012) · 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy · doi:10.1109/sp.2012.49 · Cited by 687
A Survey on Systems Security Metrics
Pendleton, M., Garcia-Lebron, R., Cho, J.-H., & Xu, S. (2017) · ACM Computing Surveys · doi:10.1145/3005714 · Cited by 283
Digital identity guidelines: authentication and lifecycle management
Grassi, P. A., Fenton, J. L., Newton, E. M., Perlner, R. A., Regenscheid, A. R., Burr, W. E., Richer, J. P., Lefkovitz, N. B., Danker, J. M., Choong, Y.-Y., et al. (2017) · doi:10.6028/nist.sp.800-63b · Cited by 261
(2017) · doi:10.1145/3133956.3134067 · Cited by 187
(2016) · Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security · Cited by 123
Metadata
- Authors
- Kelley, P. G., Komanduri, S., Mazurek, M. L., Shay, R., Vidas, T., Bauer, L., Christin, N., Cranor, L. F., & Lopez, J.
- Venue
- 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2012-05
- Pages
- 523-537
- ISSN
- 1081-6011 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2054626033
- Cited by
- 397
- References
- 3
- FWCI
- 30.07
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Kelley, P. G., Komanduri, S., Mazurek, M. L., Shay, R., Vidas, T., Bauer, L., Christin, N., Cranor, L. F., & Lopez, J. (2012). Guess Again (and Again and Again): Measuring Password Strength by Simulating Password-Cracking Algorithms. 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. https://doi.org/10.1109/sp.2012.38
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