Pathwords: a user-friendly schema for common passwords management

TL;DR

The paper introduces Pathwords, a user-friendly schema for managing common passwords that enhances security and usability by generating adequate passwords and simplifying password management.

Contribution

It proposes the Pathwords method, which improves password security and management usability compared to traditional password systems.

Findings

Pathwords generate passwords that are less guessable.

Pathwords improve user experience in password management.

The approach enhances password security without compromising usability.

Abstract

Many computer-based authentication schemata are based on pass- words. Logging on a computer, reading email, accessing content on a web server are all examples of applications where the identification of the user is usually accomplished matching the data provided by the user with data known by the application. Such a widespread approach relies on some assumptions, whose satisfaction is of foremost importance to guarantee the robustness of the solution. Some of these assumptions, like having a "secure" chan- nel to transmit data, or having sound algorithms to check the correct- ness of the data, are not addressed by this paper. We will focus on two simple issues: the problem of using adequate passwords and the problem of managing passwords. The proposed solution, the pathword, is a method that guarantees: 1 that the passwords generated with the help of a pathword are adequate (i.e. that they are not easy to guess), 2 that managing pathwords is more user friendly than managing passwords and that pathwords are less amenable to problems typical of passwords.