US researchers have unveiled a new state-of-the-art password meter that offers real-time feedback and advice to help people create better passwords.The new meter led users to create stronger passwords that were no harder to remember than passwords created without the feedback.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key result is that providing the data-driven feedback actually makes a huge difference in security compared to just having a password labelled as weak or strong,\u201d said lead author Blase Ur, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n
The findings will be presented at CHI 2017 conference in Denver, Colorado.<\/p>\n
The meter works by employing an artificial neural network: a large, complex map of information that resembles the way neurons behave in the brain.<\/p>\n
The network \u201clearns\u201d by scanning millions of existing passwords and identifying trends. If the meter detects a characteristic in your password that it knows attackers may guess, it\u2019ll tell you.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of just having a meter say, \u2018Your password is bad,\u2019 we thought it would be useful for the meter to say, \u2018Here\u2019s why it\u2019s bad and here\u2019s how you could do better,\u2019\u201d added Nicolas Christin, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, US.<\/p>\n
This data-driven feedback is presented in real-time, as a user is typing their password out letter-by-letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way attackers guess passwords is by exploiting the patterns that they observe in large datasets of breached passwords. For example, if you change Es to 3s in your password, that\u2019s not going to fool an attacker. The meter will explain about how prevalent that substitution is and offer advice on what to do instead,\u201d Ur said.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n IANS<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Picture source: Alamy images<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Picture used for illustrative purposes alone<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US researchers have unveiled a new state-of-the-art password meter that offers real-time feedback and advice to help people create better passwords.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}