We all know that passwords such as “12345” and “password1” are far from secure, but how about your lock screen pattern for your smartphone? A study shows that most of us use similar patterns to unlock our handsets, meaning they could be easily guessed by criminals.

More than three quarters of people start their lock screen patterns from a corner, according to the researcher behind the worrying work. Marte Loge, a graduate of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, also said 44 percent of study participants start their Android lock screen pattern “password” from the top left corner.

She found that around 10 percent of patterns create a letter, such as an N or C, which more often than not corresponded to a user’s own name, or that of a loved one. She presented her findings into Android lock patterns, which were introduced in 2008, at PasswordCon in Las Vegas recently.

Loge sampled 4,000 user-generated Android lock patterns as part of her thesis. She asked study participants to create three Android lock patterns — one for an imaginary shopping app, another for a fake banking app and one to unlock a phone.

She found that most people chose to create a pattern that traveled through the minimum amount of nodes of spots — four — making their pattern much less secure than if they opted for the maximum number of nodes. The average number of nodes used was five, meaning there were less than 8,000 possible pattern combinations, but this dropped to just 1,624 for four-node patterns.

Loge found that most people chose patterns that moved from left to right, making guessing combinations slightly easier.

Men were more likely than women to choose long and complicated patterns, but interestingly there was little difference between the patterns chosen by right-handed and left-handed participants.

我们都知道，“12345”或“password1”这样的密码非常不安全，但是你使用的智能手机的锁屏图形安全性又如何呢？一项研究显示，我们多数人都会使用相似的图形来解锁手机。这就意味着，解锁图形很容易就会被犯罪分子猜到。

这项引人担忧的研究背后的研究人员

称，超过四分之三的手机用户所使用的锁屏图形从四个边角之一开始。挪威理工大学的研究生马尔特·洛格还表示，在所有研究参与者

中，有44%的人为自己的安卓手机设置的锁屏图形“密码”都从左上角开始。

洛格发现，大约10%的解锁图形会构成一个字母，比如N或C。多数时候，这些字母都与用户自己或亲近的人的名字对应。安卓图形解锁于2008年推出。最近，洛格在拉斯维加斯举行的密码保护研讨会展示了自己针对安卓手机的图形解锁的研究成果。

洛格在其论文中取样了4000个用户自创的安卓解锁图形。她要求研究参与者创造出三个安卓锁屏图形 — 一个用于一款虚构的购物应用，一个用于一款虚构的银行应用，一个用于解锁手机。

她发现，大多数人用的图形都只使用了最少的节点，即四个节点。与选择使用最多节点相比，这样做会大大降低安全系数。用户平均使用的节点数为五个，这意味着总共可以产生不到8000个可能的图形组合。但如果只使用四个节点，那么这个可能性将会降到1624。

洛格发现，多数人选择的图形都是从左向右移动，这样使猜到密码的难度又稍微降低了一些。

与女性相比，男性选择复杂的长密码的可能性更高。有趣的是，右撇子和左撇子用户创造的图形并未有很大不同。

Words to Learn 相关词汇

   【对应】duìyìng correspond to match up with something, harmonize with something

    【选择】xuǎnzé opt for choose a particular option