FORMAL AND SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF COMPUTER PASSWORDS OF CZECH INTERNET USERS

Currently the need to pay attention to computer security, especially topics related to the safe use of Internet services, has been constantly growing. Many users, unfortunately, still does not respect the basic safety principles used to enter their accounts and often use universal and simple passwords. This paper focuses on the formal and semantic analysis of more than 4 000 computer passwords used by Czech Internet users aged 18-25 to access their electronic accounts. Monitoring was focused especially on passwords used to access e-mail, e-learning environment (LMS) and account for social networks (Facebook, Google+). The paper presents results of formal analysis passwords with a focus on the structure of alphanumeric passwords, password length and structure of the case-sensitive structure of passwords. It also describes the semantic characteristics of passwords (use of dictionary entries, numeric passwords and password combination), it also focuses on the universal password used to access multiple electronic accounts.