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.

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，解锁图形很容易地就会被犯罪分子猜到。

研究揭示手机用户解锁图形设置习惯 你中枪了吗？

More than three quarters of people start their lock screen patterns from a corner, according to the researcher behind the worrying work. Marte Løge, a graduate of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, also said 44 per cent of study participants start their Android lock screen pattern ‘password' from the top left corner. 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（Norwegian University of Science and Technology）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。

She found that around 10 per cent 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, Ars Technica reported. She presented her findings into Android lock patterns, which were introduced in 2008, at PasswordCon in Las Vegas last week.

据科技博客媒体Ars Technica报道，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。上周，洛格在拉斯维加斯举行的密码保护研讨会（PasswordCon）展示了自己针对安卓手机的图形解锁的研究成果。

Ms Løge 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 banking¹ app and one to unlock a phone.

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。

She found that most people chose to create a pattern that travelled through the minimum amount of nodes of spots – four – making their pattern much less secure than if they opted² 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.

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，那么这个数字将会降到1624。

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

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。

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.

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

‘Humans are predictable,' Ms Løge told Ars. ‘We're seeing the same aspects used when creating a pattern locks [as are used in] pin codes and alphanumeric passwords.'

洛格告诉Ars Technica：“人们的行为很容易预测。不管是解锁图形密码、PIN码还是字母数字组合的密码，人们的设置习惯都是一样的。”

She believes that using 'crossovers' to bamboozle³ onlookers⁴ and not starting from a corner produces the safest password patterns. Using a long and complex password is also unsurprisingly more secure.

她认为，使用“交叉”图形迷惑“有心的”旁观者以及不从边角开始绘制图形可以设置出最安全的密码图形。意料之中的是，使用复杂的长密码也更为可靠。