Related papers: Passwords: Divided they Stand, United they Fall

A password composition policy restricts the space of allowable passwords to eliminate weak passwords that are vulnerable to statistical guessing attacks. Usability studies have demonstrated that existing password composition policies can…

We introduce password strength information signaling as a novel, yet counter-intuitive, defense mechanism against password cracking attacks. Recent breaches have exposed billions of user passwords to the dangerous threat of offline password…

Text password has served as the most popular method for user authentication so far, and is not likely to be totally replaced in foreseeable future. Password authentication offers several desirable properties (e.g., low-cost, highly…

The security of passwords is dependent on a thorough understanding of the strategies used by attackers. Unfortunately, real-world adversaries use pragmatic guessing tactics like dictionary attacks, which are difficult to simulate in…

Although there have been many solutions applied, the safety challenges related to the password security mechanism are not reduced. The reason for this is that while the means and tools to support password attacks are becoming more and more…

The security of passwords depends on a thorough understanding of the strategies used by attackers. Unfortunately, real-world adversaries use pragmatic guessing tactics like dictionary attacks, which are difficult to simulate in password…

System passwords serve as critical credentials for user authentication and access control when logging into operating systems or applications. Upon entering a valid password, users pass verification to access system resources and execute…

Considering computer systems, security is the major concern with usability. Security policies need to be developed to protect information from unauthorized access. Passwords and secrete codes used between users and information systems for…

An attacker who breaks into an authentication server and steals all of the cryptographic password hashes is able to mount an offline-brute force attack against each user's password. Offline brute-force attacks against passwords are…

Password security hinges on an in-depth understanding of the techniques adopted by attackers. Unfortunately, real-world adversaries resort to pragmatic guessing strategies such as dictionary attacks that are inherently difficult to model in…

Leaks from password datasets are a regular occurrence. An organization may defend a leak with reassurances that just a small subset of passwords were taken. In this paper we show that the leak of a relatively small number of text-based…

Efficient password cracking is a critical aspect of digital forensics, enabling investigators to decrypt protected content during criminal investigations. Traditional password cracking methods, including brute-force, dictionary and…

A central challenge in password security is to characterize the attacker's guessing curve i.e., what is the probability that the attacker will crack a random user's password within the first $G$ guesses. A key challenge is that the guessing…

Passwords remain one of the most common methods for securing sensitive data in the digital age. However, weak password choices continue to pose significant risks to data security and privacy. This study aims to solve the problem by focusing…

Password guessers are instrumental for assessing the strength of passwords. Despite their diversity and abundance, little is known about how different guessers compare to each other. We perform in-depth analyses and comparisons of the…

The choice of password composition policy to enforce on a password-protected system represents a critical security decision, and has been shown to significantly affect the vulnerability of user-chosen passwords to guessing attacks. In…

Passwords are widely used for user authentication and, despite their weaknesses, will likely remain in use in the foreseeable future. Human-generated passwords typically have a rich structure, which makes them susceptible to guessing…

A partial password is a mode of password-based authentication that is widely used, especially in the financial sector. It is based on a challenge-response protocol, where at each login attempt, a challenge requesting characters from…

Recent developments in cloud storage architectures have originated new models of online storage as cooperative storage systems and interconnected clouds. Such distributed environments involve many organizations, thus ensuring…

Even though passwords are the most convenient means of authentication, they bring along themselves the threat of dictionary attacks. Dictionary attacks may be of two kinds: online and offline. While offline dictionary attacks are possible…