Think Harder! Investigating the Effect of Password Strength on Cognitive Load during Password Creation

Strict password policies can frustrate users, reduce their productivity, and lead them to write their passwords down. This paper investigates the relation between password creation and cognitive load inferred from eye pupil diameter. We use a wearable eye tracker to monitor the user’s pupil size while creating passwords with different strengths. To assess how creating passwords of different strength (namely weak and strong) influences users’ cognitive load, we conducted a lab study (N = 15). We asked the participants to create and enter 6 weak and 6 strong passwords. The results showed that passwords with different strengths affect the pupil diameter, thereby giving an indication of the user’s cognitive state. Our initial investigation shows the potential for new applications in the field of cognition-aware user interfaces. For example, future systems can use our results to determine whether the user created a strong password based on their gaze behavior, without the need to reveal the characteristics of the password.