README.md

---
license: cc-by-4.0
task_categories:
- text-classification
language:
- en
tags:
- synthetic
pretty_name: Password Weakness and Level Dataset
size_categories:
- 1M<n<10M
---

# PWLDS (Password Weakness and Level Dataset)

PWLDS is a public dataset consisting of over 4 million passwords with varying assigned strength levels. The dataset was designed to help researchers, security professionals, and developers analyze password strength and build more secure systems. The dataset contains 5 classes:

- `very_weak`: Represented by `0` in the dataset
- `weak`: Represented by `1` in the dataset
- `average`: Represented by `2` in the dataset
- `strong`: Represented by `3` in the dataset
- `very_strong`: Represented by `4` in the dataset

For strength level `4`, we used Python's `secrets` module to generate cryptographically secure passwords, ensuring the robustness and security of these passwords.

## Intended Uses

- **Security Analysis**: PWLDS can be used to study common password patterns and weaknesses, helping to identify vulnerabilities and improve password policies.
- **Machine Learning**: The dataset can be used to train machine learning models for password strength estimation or prediction.
- **Educational Purposes**: This dataset is valuable for educational projects and demonstrations related to cybersecurity and data science.
- **Benchmarking**: PWLDS provides a large, labeled dataset for benchmarking password strength estimation algorithms and tools.

## Limitations

- **No Real-World Data**: The dataset is synthetically generated and does not contain real user passwords. While this avoids privacy concerns, it may not fully represent real-world password distribution and usage patterns.
- **Bias in Password Generation**: Since passwords are generated based on predefined rules and patterns, there may be biases that do not reflect the diversity of passwords used in real-life scenarios.
- **Exclusivity to English Words**: The weak and very weak password categories rely heavily on English words, which may not be representative of non-English-speaking populations.

## Citation

When using this dataset, please cite as follows:

```
Dataset Title: Password Weakness and Level Dataset (PWLDS)
Author: Infinitode Pty Ltd
Date: 2024
Source: https://github.com/Infinitode/PWLDS
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
```