Naturally Rehearsing Passwords

We introduce quantitative usability and security models to guide the design of password management schemes --- systematic strategies to help users create and remember multiple passwords. In the same way that security proofs in cryptography are based on complexity-theoretic assumptions (e.g., hardness of factoring and discrete logarithm), we quantify usability by introducing usability assumptions. In particular, password management relies on assumptions about human memory, e.g., that a user who follows a particular rehearsal schedule will successfully maintain the corresponding memory. These assumptions are informed by research in cognitive science and validated through empirical studies. Given rehearsal requirements and a user's visitation schedule for each account, we use the total number of extra rehearsals that the user would have to do to remember all of his passwords as a measure of the usability of the password scheme. Our usability model leads us to a key observation: password reuse benefits users not only by reducing the number of passwords that the user has to memorize, but more importantly by increasing the natural rehearsal rate for each password. We also present a security model which accounts for the complexity of password management with multiple accounts and associated threats, including online, offline, and plaintext password leak attacks. Observing that current password management schemes are either insecure or unusable, we present Shared Cues--- a new scheme in which the underlying secret is strategically shared across accounts to ensure that most rehearsal requirements are satisfied naturally while simultaneously providing strong security. The construction uses the Chinese Remainder Theorem to achieve these competing goals

ORACLE DATABASE SECURITY

This paper presents some security issues, namely security database system level, data level security, user-level security, user management, resource management and password management. Security is a constant concern in the design and database development. Usually, there are no concerns about the existence of security, but rather how large it should be. A typically DBMS has several levels of security, in addition to those offered by the operating system or network. Typically, a DBMS has user accounts that require a login password to be authenticated to access the data.data security, password administration, Oracle HTTP Server, OracleAS, access control

So Much Promise, So Little Use: What is Stopping Home End-Users from Using Password Manager Applications?

In this paper, we investigate the voluntary use of password management applications in order to address a decades-old and ubiquitous information security problem related to poor password management. In our exploratory analysis, we investigate two related issues: (1) why home end-users chose not to use password management applications and (2) why high behavioral intentions to use password management applications did not always lead to actual usage for certain users. We found that issues related to the technology such as lack of trust or memory limitations, individual issues such as perceived costs and benefits, and a lack of concern about the threat (threat apathy) were the primary inhibitors of lack of use. For those that had high intentions to use a password management application but failed to actually use the software, we found that a variety of individual issues such as lack of immediacy and having insufficient time were the primary inhibitors leading to this breakdown

Password Best Practices

You may have read about the Heartbleed bug, a significant security flaw that affected many websites. You may have received emails from or seen warnings about various websites, such as Facebook and Prezi, recommending that you change your password. In this Brown Bag, Debbie Ginsberg addresses password best practices, including: Bad passwords that you should never use How to create strong passwords How to test password strength Password management tools (because who can remember all of these passwords?

New concepts in password management

Passwords have been used for many years in the security of computer systems. The password mechanism has not changed in recent years and has several inherent security problems. This paper examines several password problems including sniffers, dictionary and brute force attacks. A specific Department of Defense incident is cited to illustrate a method to thwart sniffers followed by several suggestions intended to increase the security of the password process