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Wednesday, 24 October 2012 21:27

Top 25 worst passwords of 2012 announced

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The company SplashData has released a list of the "most popular" Passwords of 2012, which listed the most commonly cracked passwords by hackers. The list is based on incidents related to hacking users of different web portals and services, including Yahoo, LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm. In all cases, it was an incredibly simple (read stupid) password, which hackers could crack without any effort. The report points out that many users still do not pay too much attention to the security of their online sessions. According to experts, no matter how much effort is invested in the development of secure systems, encryption, cryptography and anti-hacking tools that are becoming increasingly complex, in the end it all falls apart if users supplied their account to hackers "on a platter" with a password that even little kids could reveal.

SplashData says that it is incredible that the 3 most common passwords for several years in a row are “password", "123456" and "1234567", which indicates that there is always the same "critical mass" of naive users. Of course, experts say that a good portion of these are used as the profile password for one-time access to some services, fake profiles and people that do not possess the "digital online lives," so it's hard to tell how much damage was really inflicted on the owners of these simple passwords.
mypw
You can view a list of the Top 25 most intruded (stupidest) passwords, so if you own and use one, it would be highly recommended that you replace it with something far more complex. This should consist of the "illogical" a combination of letters, numbers and characters and of greater length. You can check how secure you password is at http://howsecureismypassword.net/. Have to say I'm pretty happy with my result (shown in picture above).

1. password
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. abc123
5. Qwerty
6. monkey
7. Letmein
8. Dragon
9. 111111
10. Baseball
11. iloveyou
12. trustno1
13. 1234567
14. Sunshine
15. Master
16. 123123
17. Welcome
18. Shadow
19. Ashley
20. football
21. Jesus
22. michael
23. ninja
24. Mustang
25. password1

[Ed – Although many people will still try to use passwords like this there are a number of things that online services can do. In many cases you can establish a password “blacklist” that prevents new users from using specific passwords like the ones listed above. These same services can also force users to use alphanumeric passwords and even require special characters. There are times when online services simply have to ensure their users’ safety. We would also advise caution in using any online password checking site. There is always the possibility that they are there to collect your password and not to help.]

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Read 3316 times Last modified on Wednesday, 24 October 2012 21:39

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