The password security research of vialab researchers Christopher Collins and Rafael Veras, and collaborator Julie Thorpe from the Faculty of Business and Information technology has been featured by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ian Urbina in a feature article in the New York Times Magazine. In his article, “The Secret Life of Passwords“, Urbina investigates the stories behind the passwords we use. Through the concept of keepsake passwords, the article investigates the evocative stories hidden in passwords. Our research relates to this work in that we have been investigating the numeric and linguistic patterns in passwords, in terms of how these patterns affect security as well as how these patterns reveal the culture and language.
Our research has also been featured in additional media, including:
- UOIT researchers crack down on password security in wake of Heartbleed (Julie Thorpe speaks to durhamregion.com)
-
Change your password: A lesson from Russian website hackers (Christopher Collins speaks to durhamregion.com)
- Rogers TV Durham Now, September, 2014 (all team members describe our work to Neil McArtney; includes the work of Julie Thorpe, Amirali Salehi-Abari (U Toronto), and Brent MacRae on GeoPass)
We have also been featured on UOIT Homepage, including and article entitled “Heartbleed update: UOIT researchers analyze why consumers use weak passwords”