Passwords are regarded as the most common authentication mechanism used by Web-based services, despite large-scale attacks and data breaches regularly exploiting password-associated vulnerabilities. We investigate the trends behind password formulation in an exploratory study to postulate that social identity and language play a major role in users’ general attitude toward formulating passwords. For this, we conduct a descriptive analysis of two publicly available datasets containing real username and password combinations to determine whether these socio-cultural factors play a formative role in how users formulate their passwords across countries. The preliminary results confirm that both these elements contribute to increased vulnerabilities associated with passwords. The novelty of our work lies in the exploratory investigation of identifiable trends in password formulation with regard to social context (language and identity influences) and technical context (particularly password structure). The impact of our study is a move toward a better understanding of human behavior in the context of password formulation specifically, to enable the future crafting of more targeted cybersecurity interventions that would lead to positive online behavioral change.

尽管大型攻击和数据泄露经常利用与密码相关的漏洞，但密码仍被视为基于Web的服务使用的最常见的身份验证机制。我们在一项探索性研究中调查了密码制定背后的趋势，以推测社交身份和语言在用户对密码的总体态度中起主要作用。为此，我们对包含真实用户名和密码组合的两个可公开获取的数据集进行描述性分析，以确定这些社会文化因素是否在用户跨国家制定密码的方式中发挥了形成作用。初步结果证实，这两个元素都导致与密码相关的漏洞增加。我们工作的新颖性在于对有关社会环境（语言和身份影响）和技术环境（特别是密码结构）的密码制定趋势的探索性调查。我们的研究的影响是朝着更好地理解密码制定背景下的人类行为的方向发展，以使将来能够制定更有针对性的网络安全干预措施，从而导致积极的在线行为改变。