Most of the words come from a vocabulary list that gets updated about every ten years.
VOA: special.2009.04.06
At the time, people were unfamiliar with the concept ofa computer password, which required structuring a scene early in the film in which the main character, played by Matthew Broderick, sneaks into his high-school principal's office to check out a piece of paper showing alistof random words.
For the vocabulary portion Katzman and colleague Adam Robinson performed a statistical analysis of past tests and honed alistof only 200 words to drill kids.