To explore how a user’s environment influences password creation strategies, we present a blogpost series in which we consider several different per

Tell Me Where You Live and I Will Tell You About Your P@ssw0rd: Understanding the Macrosocial Factors Influencing Password’s Strength

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2022-09-26 19:30:10

To explore how a user’s environment influences password creation strategies, we present a blogpost series in which we consider several different perspectives – the macrosocial influence of your country (where you live), the influence of your peers (who your friends are), and a technical understanding of how they are attacked – to improve password security and mitigate the risk of poorly secured passwords.

This first blogpost of the series demonstrates how various characteristics of countries influence password strength. By analyzing the mean time to crack passwords of the 200 most common passwords by country, we demonstrate that (1) Literacy level of a population; (2) Voice and accountability; (3) Level of global cybersecurity; and (4) Level of data breaches exposure significantly predict password strength performance.

Passwords constitute the first line of defense for computer-based technologies but were used for millennia as, for example, the Roman military were reportedly using passwords to distinguish allies from enemies. Today, even if attack-resistant authentication mechanisms exist, passwords constitute the most popular technique for authentication.

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