Finding the Middle Ground: Measuring Passwords for Security and Memorability

Passwords are a ubiquitous element of our digital age, and the need for secure passwords is indispensable. However, traditionally secure passwords tends to be very difficult to remember, leading users to frustration in having to remake them or even abandoning secure ones for the sake of memorability. On the other hand, passwords that are considered memorable have a tendency to be less secure. Despite many studies on passwords, the process of the users' perceiving password memorability is still abstract. This security and memorability trade-off brings out the need to find a middle ground leaving the research question on the ground whether finding passwords that are both memorable and secure is a possibility or not. In this paper, we address this very question by conducting a survey and a user-study of memorability for certain categories of popular password styles. Next, we take the most memorable of these passwords and determine their security via a bits of entropy calculation commonly used to determine a password's strength against a traditional brute force attack. Finally, we find the best performers of both memorability and security to find the middle ground of password security and memorability. Our findings present a collection of both memorable and secure styles of passwords including an infrequent but effective tactic for password remembrance.