PapiaPass: Sentence-based passwords using dependency trees

Habib Allah Yajam, Younes Karimi Ahmadabadi, Mohammad Ali Akhaee

Abstract: Passwords could make many challenges for the security of a system. One way to address the problems associated with passwords is using system-assigned passwords. However, this solution could impair the usability of a system and cause lowering user satisfaction. In this paper, we propose a new type of computer-generated passwords based on syntactic sentence structures that provide strong security and better usability compared to other conventional methods of creating computer-generated passwords. Our proposed technique uses dependency treebanks to generate sentences that are grammatically correct but lack a coherence in the sense. Using a 30,000-sentence treebank, we were able to generate sentences 32 percent of which has an entropy of more than 30 bits and a length of 10 words or less. Our study on 95 participants demonstrates that the suggested method has improved user experience while the successful recall rates of passwords do not have a significant difference compared to random character and random word passwords with the same level of security.