Are you aware that approximately 63 per cent of the data breaches carried out by notorious hackers are a result of a weak password? It’s undeniable that when it comes to choosing a safe and secured password, we humans are always slacking.
To counter this problem, researchers have developed a solution that will keep the hackers afar through the use of a password metre that offers real-time feedback and advice to help people create better combinations. The password metre or tool, is powered by an artificial neural network that is taught how to detect flaws in combinations. It is specifically trained to scan millions of existing passwords and identify the most common trend.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Chicago came up with this new mechanism after realising just how vulnerable most user accounts are, due to the simple reason of them being protected by a weak password.
“Instead of just having a metre say, “Your password is bad” we thought it would be useful for the metre to say, “Here’s why it’s bad and here’s how you could do better,” said Cylab Security and Privacy Institute faculty Nicolas Christin, a professor in the department of Engineering and Public Policy and the Insitute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon.
The tool backed by AI is fed over 155 million passwords and over 10 million natural-language words.
"Under the more common password-composition policy we tested, we found that our data-driven meter with detailed feedback led users to create significantly more secure passwords than a meter with only a bar as a strength indicator, without a significant impact on any of our memorability metrics," the team shared in the study.
The meter also apparently displays data driven text feedback about what aspects of the user’s specific password could be improved.
