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Joint International Conference on Serious Games

JCSG 2018: Serious Games pp 66–78Cite as

GAP: A Game for Improving Awareness About Passwords

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNISA,volume 11243)

Abstract

Text-based password is the most popular method for authenticating users on the internet. However, despite decades of security research, users continue to choose easy-to-guess passwords to protect their important online accounts. In this paper, we explore the potential of serious games to educate users about various features that negatively impact password security. Specifically, we designed a web-based casual game called GAP and assessed its impact by conducting a comparative user study with 119 participants. The study results show that participants who played GAP demonstrated improved performance in recognizing insecure password features than participants who did not play GAP. Besides having educational value, most of the participants also found GAP fun to play.

Keywords

  • Serious games
  • Passwords
  • Security
  • Human factors

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. TCS Research, Pune, India

    Harshal Tupsamudre, Sankalp Pandit, Sukanya Vaddepalli, Aishwarya Shinde, C. J. Gokul, Vijayanand Banahatti & Sachin Lodha

  2. IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Rahul Wasnik & Shubhankar Biswas

Authors
  1. Harshal Tupsamudre
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  2. Rahul Wasnik
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  3. Shubhankar Biswas
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  4. Sankalp Pandit
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  5. Sukanya Vaddepalli
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  6. Aishwarya Shinde
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  7. C. J. Gokul
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  8. Vijayanand Banahatti
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  9. Sachin Lodha
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Harshal Tupsamudre .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

  2. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Augusto Garcia-Agundez

  3. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Thomas Tregel

  4. Staffordshire University, Stoke on Trent, UK

    Prof. Minhua Ma

  5. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge

  6. SINTEF Technology and Society, Trondheim, Norway

    Manuel Oliveira

  7. Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Prof. Dr. Tim Marsh

  8. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Polona Caserman

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Tupsamudre, H. et al. (2018). GAP: A Game for Improving Awareness About Passwords. In: Göbel, S., et al. Serious Games. JCSG 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11243. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02762-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02762-9_8

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02761-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02762-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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