What is in Your Password? Analyzing Memorable and Secure Passwords using a Tensor Decomposition

Youjin Shin, Simon S. Woo

Abstract: In the past, there have been several studies in analyzing password strength and structures. However, there are still many unknown questions to understand what really makes passwords both memorable and strong. In this work, we aim to answer some of these questions by analyzing password dataset through the lenses of data science and machine learning perspectives. We use memorable 3,260 password dataset collected from prior IRB-approved user studies over 3 years and classify passwords into three strength groups using online and offline attack limits. Then, we apply a tensor decomposition to analyze password dataset by constructing a 3rd-order tensor with passwords' syntactic and semantic features. In particular, we used PARAFAC2 tensor decomposition to uncover the main characteristics and features that affect password strength. We quantitatively identified the underlying factors that are more frequently observed in strong and memorable passwords. We hope that our finding can validate widely accepted advice for creating strong passwords and provide useful insights to design a better password suggestion system.