If we pay attention to the last report of Keeper Security on the most used passwords last year, it is clear that there is a part of the users who do not know the requirements of a secure password. That’s why, according to Mashable point, Carnegie-Mellon University has enabled a website that shows how to create secure keys to users less skilled in the field.

It is a joint project with the University of Chicago whose demo can be accessed from here, showing us on screen a kind of “security meter”with which they hope to “educate” the most inexperienced users the ways in which they can make your passwords are more secure. The project is totally open source and can be added to existing services.

The meter uses a neural network to scan a large database of existing passwords, and detect trends. Then check the user’s password in front of this database, to determine if it is possible for crackers to guess it.

Testing the security of passwords

To check the strength of a password just enter one and see the result returned by the meter. For example, we created a first case study with the password “genbeta2017” …

The meter gives us several measures to improve it, such as not using dictionary words and avoiding using specific dates.

Now we put another practical case to the meter, using one of the most used passwords: “password” …

What we have as a recommendation is that we use a less common one. If you remember, in our article on the most used passwords of 2016 one of the most repeated was this. In addition, it is very obvious and can cause an account to be easily hacked using brute force.

Finally, if we use a password generated by a manager such as LastPass with totally random characters, this is what the meter returns to us …

As you might expect, the meter likes it. Of course, it warns us to use it only in one service.

Taking into account that we live in times in which account leaks are extremely common, and we do not do much to avoid being hacked, a tool like this can be very useful in the process of raising awareness to any user who is not clear about the importance of a strong password.

In any case, the idea of ​​making users aware of these issues is not new. A few days ago, without going any further, we saw how McAfee challenged us to improve passwords with a video game.