Showing papers on "Password strength published in 2015"

Measuring real-world accuracies and biases in modeling password guessability

Abstract: Parameterized password guessability--how many guesses a particular cracking algorithm with particular training data would take to guess a password--has become a common metric of password security. Unlike statistical metrics, it aims to model real-world attackers and to provide per-password strength estimates. We investigate how cracking approaches often used by researchers compare to real-world cracking by professionals, as well as how the choice of approach biases research conclusions. We find that semi-automated cracking by professionals outperforms popular fully automated approaches, but can be approximated by combining multiple such approaches. These approaches are only effective, however, with careful configuration and tuning; in commonly used default configurations, they underestimate the real-world guessability of passwords. We find that analyses of large password sets are often robust to the algorithm used for guessing as long as it is configured effectively. However, cracking algorithms differ systematically in their effectiveness guessing passwords with certain common features (e.g., character substitutions). This has important implications for analyzing the security of specific password characteristics or of individual passwords (e.g., in a password meter or security audit). Our results highlight the danger of relying only on a single cracking algorithm as a measure of password strength and constitute the first scientific evidence that automated guessing can often approximate guessing by professionals.

“I added '!' at the end to make it secure”: observing password creation in the lab

Abstract: Users often make passwords that are easy for attackers to guess. Prior studies have documented features that lead to easily guessed passwords, but have not probed why users craft weak passwords. To understand the genesis of common password patterns and uncover average users' misconceptions about password strength, we conducted a qualitative interview study. In our lab, 49 participants each created passwords for fictitious banking, email, and news website accounts while thinking aloud. We then interviewed them about their general strategies and inspirations. Most participants had a well-defined process for creating passwords. In some cases, participants consciously made weak passwords. In other cases, however, weak passwords resulted from misconceptions, such as the belief that adding "!" to the end of a password instantly makes it secure or that words that are difficult to spell are more secure than easy-tospell words. Participants commonly anticipated only very targeted attacks, believing that using a birthday or name is secure if those data are not on Facebook. In contrast, some participants made secure passwords using unpredictable phrases or non-standard capitalization. Based on our data, we identify aspects of password creation ripe for improved guidance or automated intervention.

Improvement of robust smart-card-based password authentication scheme

Abstract: Smart-card-based password authentication scheme is one of the commonly used mechanisms to prevent unauthorized service and resource access and to remove the potential security threats over the insecure networks and has been investigated extensively in the last decade. Recently, Chen et al. proposed a smart-card-based password authentication scheme and claimed that the scheme can withstand offline password guessing attacks even if the information stored in the smart card is extracted by the adversary. However, we observe that the scheme of Chen et al. is insecure against offline password guessing attacks in this case. To remedy this security problem, we propose an improved authentication protocol, which inherits the merits of the scheme of Chen et al. and is free from the security flaw of their scheme. Compared with the previous schemes, our improved scheme provides more security guarantees while keeping efficiency. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Large-Scale Evaluation of High-Impact Password Strength Meters

Abstract: Passwords are ubiquitous in our daily digital lives. They protect various types of assets ranging from a simple account on an online newspaper website to our health information on government websites. However, due to the inherent value they protect, attackers have developed insights into cracking/guessing passwords both offline and online. In many cases, users are forced to choose stronger passwords to comply with password policies; such policies are known to alienate users and do not significantly improve password quality. Another solution is to put in place proactive password-strength meters/checkers to give feedback to users while they create new passwords. Millions of users are now exposed to these meters on highly popular web services that use user-chosen passwords for authentication. More recently, these meters are also being built into popular password managers, which protect several user secrets including passwords. Recent studies have found evidence that some meters actually guide users to choose better passwords—which is a rare bit of good news in password research. However, these meters are mostly based on ad hoc design. At least, as we found, most vendors do not provide any explanation for their design choices, sometimes making them appear as a black box. We analyze password meters deployed in selected popular websites and password managers. We document obfuscated source-available meters, infer the algorithm behind the closed-source ones, and measure the strength labels assigned to common passwords from several password dictionaries. From this empirical analysis with millions of passwords, we shed light on how the server end of some web service meters functions and provide examples of highly inconsistent strength outcomes for the same password in different meters, along with examples of many weak passwords being labeled as strong or even excellent. These weaknesses and inconsistencies may confuse users in choosing a stronger password, and thus may weaken the purpose of these meters. On the other hand, we believe these findings may help improve existing meters and possibly make them an effective tool in the long run.

OMEN: Faster Password Guessing Using an Ordered Markov Enumerator

Abstract: Passwords are widely used for user authentication, and will likely remain in use in the foreseeable future, despite several weaknesses. One important weakness is that human-generated passwords are far from being random, which makes them susceptible to guessing attacks. Understanding the adversaries capabilities for guessing attacks is a fundamental necessity for estimating their impact and advising countermeasures.

A Spoonful of Sugar?: The Impact of Guidance and Feedback on Password-Creation Behavior

Abstract: Users often struggle to create passwords under strict requirements. To make this process easier, some providers present real-time feedback during password creation, indicating which requirements are not yet met. Other providers guide users through a multi-step password-creation process. Our 6,435-participant online study examines how feedback and guidance affect password security and usability. We find that real-time password-creation feedback can help users create strong passwords with fewer errors. We also find that although guiding participants through a three-step password-creation process can make creation easier, it may result in weaker passwords. Our results suggest that service providers should present password requirements with feedback to increase usability. However, the presentation of feedback and guidance must be carefully considered, since identical requirements can have different security and usability effects depending on presentation.

Monte Carlo Strength Evaluation: Fast and Reliable Password Checking

Abstract: Modern password guessing attacks adopt sophisticated probabilistic techniques that allow for orders of magnitude less guesses to succeed compared to brute force. Unfortunately, best practices and password strength evaluators failed to keep up: they are generally based on heuristic rules designed to defend against obsolete brute force attacks. Many passwords can only be guessed with significant effort, and motivated attackers may be willing to invest resources to obtain valuable passwords. However, it is eminently impractical for the defender to simulate expensive attacks against each user to accurately characterize their password strength. This paper proposes a novel method to estimate the number of guesses needed to find a password using modern attacks. The proposed method requires little resources, applies to a wide set of probabilistic models, and is characterised by highly desirable convergence properties. The experiments demonstrate the scalability and generality of the proposal. In particular, the experimental analysis reports evaluations on a wide range of password strengths, and of state-of-the-art attacks on very large datasets, including attacks that would have been prohibitively expensive to handle with existing simulation-based approaches.

Cryptanalysis of a dynamic identity-based remote user authentication scheme with verifiable password update

Abstract: In the authentication scheme, it is important to ensure that the user's identity changed dynamically with the different sessions, which can protect the user's privacy information from being tracked. Recently, Chang et al. proposed an untraceable dynamic identity-based remote user authentication scheme with verifiable password update. However, our analysis show that the property of untraceability can easily be broken by the legal user of the system. Besides, we find the scheme of Chang et al. vulnerable to offline password guessing attack, impersonation attack, stolen smart card attack, and insider attack. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cracking-Resistant Password Vaults Using Natural Language Encoders

Abstract: Password vaults are increasingly popular applications that store multiple passwords encrypted under a single master password that the user memorizes. A password vault can greatly reduce the burden on a user of remembering passwords, but introduces a single point of failure. An attacker that obtains a user's encrypted vault can mount offline brute-force attacks and, if successful, compromise all of the passwords in the vault. In this paper, we investigate the construction of encrypted vaults that resist such offline cracking attacks and force attackers instead to mount online attacks. Our contributions are as follows. We present an attack and supporting analysis showing that a previous design for cracking-resistant vaults -- the only one of which we are aware -- actually degrades security relative to conventional password-based approaches. We then introduce a new type of secure encoding scheme that we call a natural language encoder (NLE). An NLE permits the construction of vaults which, when decrypted with the wrong master password, produce plausible-looking decoy passwords. We show how to build NLEs using existing tools from natural language processing, such as n-gram models and probabilistic context-free grammars, and evaluate their ability to generate plausible decoys. Finally, we present, implement, and evaluate a full, NLE-based cracking-resistant vault system called No Crack.

Optimal Distributed Password Verification

Abstract: We present a highly efficient cryptographic protocol to protect user passwords against server compromise by distributing the capability to verify passwords over multiple servers. Password verification is a single-round protocol and requires from each server only one exponentiation in a prime-order group. In spite of its simplicity, our scheme boasts security against dynamic and transient corruptions, meaning that servers can be corrupted at any time and can recover from corruption by going through a non-interactive key refresh procedure. The users' passwords remain secure against offline dictionary attacks as long as not all servers are corrupted within the same time period between refreshes. The only currently known scheme to achieve such strong security guarantees incurs the considerable cost of several hundred exponentiations per server. We prove our scheme secure in the universal composability model, which is well-known to offer important benefits for password-based primitives, under the gap one-more Diffie-Hellman assumption in the random-oracle model. Server initialization and refresh must take place in a trusted execution environment. Initialization additionally requires a secure message to each server, but the refresh procedure is non-interactive. We show that these requirements are easily met in practice by providing an example deployment architecture.

Next Gen PCFG Password Cracking

Abstract: Passwords continue to remain an important authentication technique. The probabilistic context-free grammar-based password cracking system of Weir et al. was an important addition to dictionary-based password cracking approaches. In this paper, we show how to substantially improve upon this system by systematically adding keyboard patterns and multiword patterns (two or more words in the alphabetic part of a password) to the context-free grammars used in the probabilistic password cracking. Our results on cracking multiple data sets show that by learning these new classes of patterns, we can achieve up to 22% improvement over the original system. In this paper, we also define metrics to help analyze and improve attack dictionaries. Using our approach to improving the dictionary, we achieve an additional improvement of $\sim 33$ % by increasing the coverage of a standard attack dictionary. Combining both approaches, we can achieve a 55% improvement over the previous system. Our tests were done over fairly long password guessing sessions (up to 85 billion) and thus show the uniform effectiveness of our techniques for long cracking sessions.

Distributed single sign-on

Abstract: Respective cryptographic shares of password data, dependent on a user password, are provided at n authentication servers. A number t 1 ≦n of the password data shares determine if the user password matches a password attempt. Respective cryptographic shares of secret data, enabling determination of a username for each verifier server, are provided at n authentication servers. A number t 2 ≦t 1 of the shares reconstruct the secret data. For a password attempt, the user computer communicates with at least t 1 authentication servers to determine if the user password matches the password attempt and, if so, the user computer receives at least t 2 secret data shares from respective authentication servers. The user computer uses the secret data to generate, with T≦t 1 of said t 1 servers, a cryptographic token for authenticating the user computer to a selected verifier server, secret from said at least T servers, under said username.

A new three-party-authenticated key agreement scheme based on chaotic maps without password table

Abstract: Three-party-authenticated key agreement allows two users to establish a common session key through a trusted server via an insecure communication channel. Early authenticated key agreement schemes were mostly based on either pairing operations, hash operations, or modular exponentiation operations. In 2011, Wang and Zhao took a new path and built their three-party-authenticated key agreement scheme on the basis of chaotic maps. By applying Chebyshev chaotic maps, Wang and Zhao succeeded in lifting their scheme up to a higher level of efficiency and security. In this paper, we shall propose a new three-party-authenticated key agreement scheme based on chaotic maps that can do without passwords. Keeping no password table, our new scheme is completely resistant to password guessing attacks. Besides that, our scheme also offers thorough privacy protection to the users, so the user forgery attack can cause no damage. Compared with the schemes currently available including Wang and Zhao’s work, our new scheme obviously provides better security.

Cracking More Password Hashes With Patterns

Abstract: It is a common mistake of application developers to store user passwords within databases as plaintext or only as their unsalted hash values. Many real-life successful hacking attempts that enabled attackers to get unauthorized access to sensitive database entries including user passwords have been experienced in the past. Seizing password hashes, attackers perform brute-force, dictionary, or rainbow-table attacks to reveal plaintext passwords from their hashes. Dictionary attacks are very fast for cracking hashes but their success rate is not sufficient. In this paper, we propose a novel method for improving dictionary attacks. Our method exploits several password patterns that are commonly preferred by users when trying to choose a complex and strong password. In order to analyze and show success rates of our developed method, we performed cracking tests on real-life leaked password hashes using both a traditional dictionary and our pattern-based dictionary. We observed that our pattern-based method is superior for cracking password hashes.

Quantifying the security advantage of password expiration policies

Abstract: Many security policies force users to change passwords within fixed intervals, with the apparent justification that this improves overall security. However, the implied security benefit has never been explicitly quantified. In this note, we quantify the security advantage of a password expiration policy, finding that the optimal benefit is relatively minor at best, and questionable in light of overall costs.

ErsatzPasswords: Ending Password Cracking and Detecting Password Leakage

Abstract: In this work we present a simple, yet effective and practical, scheme to improve the security of stored password hashes, rendering their cracking detectable and insuperable at the same time. We utilize a machine-dependent function, such as a physically unclonable function (PUF) or a hardware security module (HSM) at the authentication server to prevent off-site password discovery, and a deception mechanism to alert us if such an action is attempted. Our scheme can be easily integrated with legacy systems without the need of any additional servers, changing the structure of the hashed password file or any client modifications. When using the scheme the structure of the hashed passwords file, etc/shadow or etc/master.passwd, will appear no different than in the traditional scheme.1 However, when an attacker exfiltrates the hashed passwords file and tries to crack it, the only passwords he will get are the ersatzpasswords --- the "fake passwords". When an attempt to login using these ersatzpasswords is detected an alarm will be triggered in the system. Even with an adversary who knows about the scheme, cracking cannot be launched without physical access to the authentication server. The scheme also includes a secure backup mechanism in the event of a failure of the hardware dependent function. We discuss our implementation and provide some discussion in comparison to the traditional authentication scheme.

Adaptive Witness Encryption and Asymmetric Password-Based Cryptography

Abstract: We show by counter-example that the soundness security requirement for witness encryption given by Garg, Gentry, Sahai and Waters (STOC 2013) does not suffice for the security of their own applications. We introduce adaptively-sound (AS) witness encryption to fill the gap. We then introduce asymmetric password-based encryption (A-PBE). This offers gains over classical, symmetric password-based encryption in the face of attacks that compromise servers to recover hashed passwords. We distinguish between invasive A-PBE schemes (they introduce new password-based key-derivation functions) and non-invasive ones (they can use existing, deployed password-based key-derivation functions). We give simple and efficient invasive A-PBE schemes and use AS-secure witness encryption to give non-invasive A-PBE schemes.

Surpass: System-initiated User-replaceable Passwords

Abstract: System-generated random passwords have maximum password security and are highly resistant to guessing attacks. However, few systems use such passwords because they are difficult to remember. In this paper, we propose a system-initiated password scheme called "Surpass" that lets users replace few characters in a random password to make it more memorable. We conducted a large-scale online study to evaluate the usability and security of four Surpass policies, varying the number of character replacements allowed from 1 to 4 in randomly-generated 8-character passwords. The study results suggest that some Surpass policies (with 3 and 4 character replacements) outperform by 11% to 13% the original randomly-generated password policy in memorability, while showing a small increase in the percentage of cracked passwords. When compared to a user-generated password complexity policy (that mandates the use of numbers, symbols, and uppercase letters) the Surpass policy with 4-character replacements did not show statistically significant inferiority in memorability. Our qualitative lab study showed similar trends. This Surpass policy demonstrated significant superiority in security though, with 21% fewer cracked passwords than the user-generated password policy.

On the Security Flaws in ID-based Password Authentication Schemes for Telecare Medical Information Systems

Abstract: Telecare medical information systems (TMIS) enable healthcare delivery services. However, access of these services via public channel raises security and privacy issues. In recent years, several smart card based authentication schemes have been introduced to ensure secure and authorized communication between remote entities over the public channel for the (TMIS). We analyze the security of some of the recently proposed authentication schemes of Lin, Xie et al., Cao and Zhai, and Wu and Xu's for TMIS. Unfortunately, we identify that these schemes failed to satisfy desirable security attributes. In this article we briefly discuss four dynamic ID-based authentication schemes and demonstrate their failure to satisfy desirable security attributes. The study is aimed to demonstrate how inefficient password change phase can lead to denial of server scenario for an authorized user, and how an inefficient login phase causes the communication and computational overhead and decrease the performance of the system. Moreover, we show the vulnerability of Cao and Zhai's scheme to known session specific temporary information attack, vulnerability of Wu and Xu's scheme to off-line password guessing attack, and vulnerability of Xie et al.'s scheme to untraceable on-line password guessing attack.

Design and analysis of a chaotic maps-based three-party authenticated key agreement protocol

Abstract: An authenticated key agreement protocol is a protocol for information security over insecure networks. Due to the excellent properties of chaotic system, chaos-related cryptography has received a certain development, and recently, researchers have presented some three-party authenticated key agreement protocols based on the chaotic maps. Unfortunately, most of the chaotic maps-based key agreement protocols use a password to achieve the key agreement, and this leads to some security loopholes. First, the server has to store a sensitive password table, and it would be dangerous if the server was compromised or the password table was leaked. Besides, the low-entropy passwords are vulnerable to some password-related attacks, such as insider attack and password guessing attacks. In this paper, we design a communication- and computation-efficient chaotic maps-based three-party authenticated key agreement protocol without password and clock synchronization, and formally analyze the security using Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic. In addition to the formal analysis, we also prove that the presented protocol is free from most of the common attacks, and compare the performance and functionality with other related protocols. The result of the analysis and comparisons demonstrate that our protocol is more efficient and practical for real applications.

System and method for sequential data signatures

Abstract: A digital message is signed and, if a request is approved, receives a time stamp. The request is computed as a first function of the message and a current one of a sequence of passwords computed such that each password corresponds to an index unit. Each of the passwords may be computed as a function, such as a hash function, pseudo-random function, or encryption function, of the subsequent password, whereby the sequence terminates with an initial password that forms a public key parameter for the password sequence. At least one hash tree uses at least a subset of the passwords as inputs to a hash tree used to verify the passwords.

PARS: A Uniform and Open-source Password Analysis and Research System

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce an open-source and modular password analysis and research system, PARS, which provides a uniform, comprehensive and scalable research platform for password security. To the best of our knowledge, PARS is the first such system that enables researchers to conduct fair and comparable password security research. PARS contains 12 state-of-the-art cracking algorithms, 15 intra-site and cross-site password strength metrics, 8 academic password meters, and 15 of the 24 commercial password meters from the top-150 websites ranked by Alexa. Also, detailed taxonomies and large-scale evaluations of the PARS modules are presented in the paper.

Scrutinizing WPA2 password generating algorithms in wireless routers

Abstract: A wireless router is a networking device that enables a user to set up a wireless connection to the Internet A router can offer a secure channel by cryptographic means which provides authenticity and confidentiality Nowadays, almost all routers use a secure channel by default that is based on Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) This is a security protocol which is believed not to be susceptible to practical key recovery attacks However, the passwords should have sufficient entropy to avert bruteforce attacks In this paper, we compose a strategy on how to reverse-engineer embedded routers Furthermore, we describe a procedure that can instantly gather a complete wireless authentication trace which enables an offline password recovery attack Finally, we present a number of use cases where we identify extremely weak password generating algorithms in various routers which are massively deployed in The Netherlands The algorithms are used to generate the default WPA2 password Such a password is loaded during device initialization and hardware reset Users that did not explicitly change their wireless password are most likely vulnerable to practical attacks which can recover their password within minutes A stolen password allows an adversary to abuse someone else's internet connection, for instance compromising the firewall, making a fraudulent transaction or performing other criminal activities Together with the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre we have initiated a responsible disclosure procedure However, since these routers are also used by many other companies in various countries, our findings seem to relate an international industry wide security issue

Publishable Humanly Usable Secure Password Creation Schemas

Abstract: What can a human compute in his/her head that a powerful adversary cannot infer? To answer this question, we define a model of human computation and a measure of security. Then, motivated by the special case of password creation, we propose a collection of well-defined password-generation methods. We show that our password generation methods are humanly computable and, to a well-defined extent, machine uncrackable. For the proof of security, we posit that password generation methods are public, but that the human’s privately chosen seed is not, and that the adversary will have observed only a few input-output pairs. Besides the application to password generation, our proposed Human Usability Model (HUM) will have other applications.

A reliable trust management scheme in wireless sensor networks

Abstract: Physical security of wireless sensor nodes cannot be provided because making sensor nodes tamperproof is prohibitively expensive. Due to this lack of physical security, intruders can easily compromise one or more sensor nodes to subvert network operations bypassing encryption and password security systems. Trust and reputation systems have been recently suggested as an effective security mechanism to overcome the shortcomings of cryptography-based schemes in securing wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Although researchers have been studying the problem of trust modeling and management in WSNs for over a decade, their focus was on trust based only on reputation which is by itself not sensitive enough to perceive suddenly spoiled nodes that may launch intelligent attacks against a trust-establishment mechanism. In this paper, we present a Trust Model based on Risk evaluation (TMR) to effectively deal with conflicting behaviors of malicious nodes. Unfortunately, risk factor evaluation can make the trust model more reliable because it becomes more sensitive to on-off attack.

Password Hashing Competition - Survey and Benchmark.

Abstract: Password hashing is the common approach for maintaining users’ password-related information that is later used for authentication. A hash for each password is calculated and maintained at the service provider end. When a user logins the service, the hash of the given password is computed and contrasted with the stored hash. If the two hashes match, the authentication is successful. However, in many cases the passwords are just hashed by a cryptographic hash function or even stored in clear. These poor password protection practises have lead to efficient attacks that expose the users’ passwords. PBKDF2 is the only standardized construction for password hashing. Other widely used primitives are bcrypt and scrypt. The low variety of methods derive the international cryptographic community to conduct the Password Hashing Competition (PHC). The competition aims to identify new password hashing schemes suitable for widespread adoption. It started in 2013 with 22 active submissions. Nine finalists are announced during 2014. In 2015, a small portfolio of schemes will be proposed. This paper provides the first survey and benchmark analysis of the 22 proposals. All proposals are evaluated on the same platform over a common benchmark suite. We measure the execution time, code size and memory consumption of PBKDF2, bcrypt, scrypt, and the 22 PHC schemes. The first round results are summarized along with a benchmark analysis that is focused on the nine finalists and contributes to the final selection of the winners.

Screen unlocking method and device

Abstract: The invention is applicable to the technical field of mobile terminals and provides a screen unlocking method and device. The method comprises the steps that when keys are triggered, a generated key trigger instruction is recorded, wherein the number of the keys is at least one, and key trigger comprises short-pressing trigger and long-pressing trigger; when the key trigger instruction with a preset digit is recorded continuously, whether the key trigger instruction is completely identical with a set unlocking password is judged; when the key trigger instruction is identical with the set unlocking password, unlocking is completed, and otherwise a screen locking interface is maintained. By the adoption of the technical scheme, a binary unlocking mode which is a novel unlocking mode is provided; after a plurality of keys are set, each key can be triggered by being pressed for a long time or a short time, so that the password complexity is enhanced, and the unlocking safety is guaranteed.

Password Meters and Generators on the Web: From Large-Scale Empirical Study to Getting It Right

Abstract: Web services heavily rely on passwords for user authentication. To help users chose stronger passwords, password meter and password generator facilities are becoming increasingly popular. Password meters estimate the strength of passwords provided by users. Password generators help users with generating stronger passwords. This paper turns the spotlight on the state of the art of password meters and generators on the web. Orthogonal to the large body of work on password metrics, we focus on getting password meters and generators right in the web setting. We report on the state of affairs via a large-scale empirical study of web password meters and generators. Our findings reveal pervasive trust to third-party code to have access to the passwords. We uncover three cases when this trust is abused to leak the passwords to third parties. Furthermore, we discover that often the passwords are sent out to the network, invisibly to users, and sometimes in clear. To improve the state of the art, we propose SandPass, a general web framework that allows secure and modular porting of password meter and generation modules. We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework by a reference implementation and a case study with a password meter by the Swedish Post and Telecommunication Agency.

RouteMap: A Route and Map Based Graphical Password Scheme for Better Multiple Password Memory

Abstract: Graphical passwords (GPs) are considered as one promising solution to replace traditional text-based passwords. Many GP schemes have been proposed in the literature such as PassPoints, DAS, Cued Click Points, GeoPass and so on. These schemes reported promising performance in their studies in the aspects of security and usability, however, we notice that these GP schemes may suffer from the issue of multiple password memory. In our first user study, it is identified that this issue has indeed become a big challenge. In real-world applications, users usually have to remember and maintain more than one password in different scenarios, thus, it is very essential to develop a better GP scheme to solve this issue. In this paper, we focus on map-based GPs and propose a scheme of RouteMap for better multiple password memory, which allows users to draw a route on a map as their secrets. In our second user study with 60 participants, it is found that users can achieve better performance using RouteMap in terms of multiple password memory, as compared with two similar schemes. Our effort attempts to complement existing studies and stimulate more research on this issue.