Password Guessability as a Service (PGaaS)

Abstract

This paper presents an adaptable password guessability service suited for different password generators according to what a user might need when using such a service. In particular, we introduce a flexible cloud-based software architecture engineered to provide an efficient and robust password guessability service that benefits from all the features and goals expected from cloud applications. This architecture comprises several components, featuring the combination of a synthetic dataset generator realized via a generative adversarial network (GAN), which may learn the distribution of passwords from a given dictionary and generate high-quality password guesses, along with a password guessability estimator realized via a password strength estimation algorithm. In addition to detailing the architecture’s components, we run a performance evaluation on the architecture’s key components, obtaining promising results. Finally, the complete application is delivered and may be used by a user to estimate the strength of a password and the time taken by an average computer to enumerate it.

Reviewing the Usability of Web Authentication Procedures: Comparing the Current Procedures of 20 Websites

“…Some studies have focused on one security procedure, such as resetting passwords [9][10][11]. Other studies have focused on only one part of a security procedure, such as password policies [12][13][14][15][16][17] or password meters [18][19][20][21][22]. Some research has focused on specific authentication methods, such as passwords [23][24][25], biometrics [26][27][28][29], or two-factor authentication [30][31][32][33][34][35].…”