Creating Better Passwords By Making Up Stories

Everyone has their own method of choosing and using passwords.

“There’s….an easy one that I use for stuff I don’t care about and then there’s a more secure version,” said Danny Zhu, a student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn.

Having multiple unique passwords is becoming more and more crucial to keeping online information secure, but remembering all of them can be a challenge.

Now, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon developed an app that makes remembering and using secure passwords easy.

“The only work you have to do is memorize nine stories and from those stories the app helps you to form over 100 strong passwords,” said Jeremiah Blocki, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon.

The system creates passwords based on the way the brain remembers and memorizes things, by practicing and repeating a one-sentence story with pictures.

“Our brain is trained to remember things that we’ve seen frequently, things that we’ve seen recently and things that we find interesting,” Said Blocki.

The app works by showing the user a set of pictures that ultimately serve as a reminder for the password. More specifically, the pictures prompt the user to create a story. From that story, users pull specific letters together to create one strong password. Thus,when a user logs in to PayPal, for example, three to four pictures are displayed to prompt the user’s memory of the correct password.

“It’s an uncommon pairing of words, so this would be a story that would jump out at most people as unusual or interesting-- which makes it easier to remember,” said Blocki.

The software can help trigger memories of existing passwords for sites like Amazon and iTunes.

Researchers are hoping to have the application available in late 2014.

Get Inside The Science:

Carnegie Mellon Scheme Uses Shared Visual Cues To Help People Remember Multiple Passwords

Carnegie Mellon – School of Computer Science

Jeremiah Blocki , Carnegie Mellon University