A password generator tool to increase users' awareness on bad password construction strategies

Abstract

Cybersecurity education and training activities are essential to empower end users to take informed decisions and address cyber threats. An ongoing problem that still troubles the cybersecurity community is the selection of weak passwords. Users keep using weak passwords, cultivating the risk of compromisation. Users often choose passwords that appear to be strong. This creates a false sense of security as users have the belief that their passwords cannot be guessed. Unfortunately, given that attackers are aware of the users' habits, they often recover users' passwords. Therefore, it is imperative to educate people about the bad password construction strategies and empower them to select stronger passwords. Educational activities should be enhanced by integrating practical aspects that will assist the users to realize the problem. This work identifies and combines a range of bad password construction strategies and designs a relevant tool to practically demonstrate the strategies to the users.