A comparison of CS majors and non-CS majors attitudes and practices regarding password strength

This paper describes the results of a study designed to compare perceptions and practices regarding password strength among college students. In particular, the study compares perceived and actual email password strengths of computer science majors with those of other majors, as well as attitudes regarding the importance of password safety. Based on existing literature on password strength measures, a simple algorithm is presented for evaluating password strength based on reported password characteristics. The results indicate that there exists a statistically significant difference between computer science majors and non-CS majors, but not between beginning and advanced computer science majors. In general, students' perceptions of their own password strengths are weakly correlated to the actual computed password strength.