Rafael Veras Guimarães successfully defended his M.Sc. thesis “An Investigation of Semantic Patterns in Passwords”. His research investigated semantic patterns in passwords, including published work on dates in passwords, and exciting forthcoming work on the secret language of passwords. In each case, Rafael used visualization and natural language processing techniques to parse millions of leaked and cracked real passwords and organize the data. Patterns discovered in the password data, such as word-word dependencies (“goodgirl”>>”goodboy” but “badboy”>>”badgirl”) revealed vulnerabilities that semantic patterns present to passwords as a way to secure information. His research has resulted in a new method for semantics-based password cracking attacks, and will surely motivate changes to password creation mechanisms and policies in the future.
As this work is in submission, and we have exciting future work plans, we have not posted his thesis or latest results, but hope to do so soon!
Rafael plans to stay for future studies at UOIT as a PhD candidate, and we are excited to continue to work with him.