passwordmeter 0.1.0

A password strength measuring library.

A configurable, extensible password strength measuring library.

TL;DR

Install:

$ pip install passwordmeter

Use from within an application with the default factors:

import passwordmeter

strength, improvements = passwordmeter.test(sys.argv[1])

if strength < 0.5:
  print 'Your password is too weak.'

Use on the command line:

$ pwm 'password'
Password strength: 0.132549901057 (Extremely weak)
Possible improvements:
  - Use a good mix of numbers, letters, and symbols
  - Avoid using one of the ten thousand most common passwords
  - Use a good mix of UPPER case and lower case letters

Overview

The main function provided by the passwordmeter package is the Meter.test() method, which returns a tuple of (float, dict). The float is the strength of the password in the range 0 to 1 (inclusive), where 0 is extremely weak and 1 is extremely strong. The second parameter, which may be None, is a dictionary of ways the password could be improved. The keys of the dict are general “categories” of ways to improve the password (e.g. “length”) that are fixed strings, and the values are internationalizable strings that are human-friendly descriptions and possibly tailored to the specific password.

A password’s strength is determined by doing a weighted, skewed, average of a set of “factors”. The Meter constructor takes a settings dictionary that configures, customizes, and/or supplements the default set of factors.

The passwordmeter.test is a helper function that simply uses the default settings to test the strength of a password, and is effectively a shorthand for Meter().test(...).

For example, to use a custom selection of factors:

import passwordmeter

# use only the 'length' and 'charmix' factors
meter = passwordmeter.Meter(settings=dict(factors='length,charmix'))

strength, improvements = meter.test('s3cr3t p4ssW0RD!')

Settings

The settings attribute to the Meter constructor is a dictionary with the following keys:

• factors:

  This is a comma-separated list of factors to use in calculating the strength of a password. Each element in the list is either the name of a known factor or a symbol-spec as defined by the asset module. See passwordmeter.DEFAULT_FACTORS for the default list of factors (and their names).

  For example, to use only the ‘length’ factor and a custom factor:

  import passwordmeter
  
  class SillyFactor(passwordmeter.Factor):
    category = 'silly'
    def test(self, value, extra):
      if value == 'silly':
        return (0, 'That is a silly password!')
      return (1, None)
  
  meter = passwordmeter.Meter(
    settings=dict(factors='length,mypackage.SillyFactor'))

Custom Factors

A custom factor should subclass passwordmeter.Factor, implement the test method, and have a unique category (string) attribute.

The test method takes two parameters: the value to be tested, and an opaque extra parameter that is supplied by the calling application (and can be ignored if not needed). It should return a tuple of (float, str).

The first element (float) of the return tuple must be greater or equal to zero. Although it should generally not be greater than 1.0, a factor may return a greater value: this is used to artificially boost the strength of the total outcome relative to the other factors if applicable. Note, however, that the Meter class will always clip the final outcome to the inclusive range [0, 1].

The second element of the return tuple should be a string, which is a description of how to improve the provided password. This string can be None if no known way exists to improve this password for this specific factor. Note that Meter class will associate this description with the factor’s category in the final outcome.