Top 10 worst passwords
23 Jan 2010
I thought this Huff Post article was interesting.
The recent hack of the website RockYou exposed around 32 million user passwords, which data security firm Imperva has analyzed to create a list of the worst passwords.
Want to know what terms to avoid?
Here are the top ten most commonly used passwords (see the full list of the top 20 in the charts below):
1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123
An attack that exposed 10,000 Hotmail, MSN and Live.com passwords yielded similar findings.
According to a
researcher who examined the leaked data, “123456” was the most frequently used password, appearing 64 times in total.
Wired adds,
Forty-two percent of the passwords used lowercase letters from “a to z”; only 6 percent mixed alpha-numeric and other characters.
Many of the top 20 passwords used were Spanish names, such as Alejandra and Alberto, suggesting that the victims were in Spanish-speaking communities. Nearly 2,000 of the passwords were only six characters long. The longest password was 30 characters — lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo.
Interesting huh? I was pleased that mine does not show up, does yours?
Before I got my start in the tech industry as part of Apple’s UK Mac launch team, I was a professional drummer (notice I didn’t say musician). But once I got in, I was hooked and I’ve been involved in the tech industry, primarily software development, for over 35 years. I founded this company and I now have the enviable title of System Architect (as well as Managing Director) here at OpenCRM.