The purpose of this study was to measure whether participant education, profession, and technical skill level exhibited a relationship with identification of password strength. Participants reviewed 50 passwords and labeled each as weak or strong. A Chi-square test of independence was used to measure relationships between education, profession, technical skill level relative to the frequency of weak and strong password identification. The results demonstrate significant relationships across all variable combinations except for technical skill and strong passwords which demonstrated no relationship. This research has three limitations. Data collection was dependent upon participant self-reporting and has limited externalized power. Further, the instrument was constructed under the assumption that all participants could read English and understood the concept of password strength. Finally, we did not control for external tool use (i.e., password strength meter). The results build upon existing literature insofar as the outcomes add to the collective understanding of user perception of passwords in specific and authentication in general. Whereas prior research has explored similar areas, such work has done so by having participants create passwords. This work measures perception of pre-generated passwords. The results demonstrate a need for further investigation into why users continue to rely on weak passwords. The originality of this work rests in soliciting a broad spectrum of participants and measuring potential correlations between participant education, profession, and technical skill level.

中文翻译：

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感知的阴影 - 识别密码强度的用户因素

本研究的目的是衡量参与者的教育、职业和技术技能水平是否与密码强度的识别有关。参与者审查了 50 个密码，并将每个密码标记为弱或强。独立性卡方检验用于衡量教育、职业、技术技能水平与弱密码和强密码识别频率之间的关系。结果表明所有变量组合之间存在显着关系，但技术技能和强密码除外，它们没有证明任何关系。这项研究有三个局限性。数据收集依赖于参与者的自我报告，并且外化能力有限。更多，该工具的构建假设所有参与者都可以阅读英语并理解密码强度的概念。最后，我们没有控制外部工具的使用（即密码强度计）。结果建立在现有文献的基础上，因为结果增加了用户对特定密码和一般身份验证的集体理解。虽然之前的研究探索了类似的领域，但这些工作是通过让参与者创建密码来完成的。这项工作衡量对预生成密码的感知。结果表明需要进一步调查为什么用户继续依赖弱密码。这项工作的独创性在于征集广泛的参与者并衡量参与者教育、职业、