Password “123456” remains the “king of the mountain”

Specialists at SplashData analyzed over 5 million accounts that became available due to this year’s breaches. Analysts were interested in what passwords were used and the final “top chart” is as always upsetting. Second year in a row the most popular password is “123456”. The word “password” is on the second place (same as last year). “12345678” is number three.

Other “complex” passwords also made the “top ten”, for example, “12345”, “qwerty” and “123456789”. In addition, users in 2017 often used names of sports (football, baseball, soccer, hockey), car brands (Mercedes, Corvette, Ferrari) and their own names as passwords (Robert, Matthew, Jordan, Daniel). SplashData representatives skeptically point out that having such a password is the same as not having any at all. Hackers turned lists of the most used passwords into sort of “dictionaries” a long time ago. What seems “ingenious” to users, such as adding a number or a letter at the end or the beginning of a primitive password, also doesn’t work. Cyber criminals automatically check all of these combinations in mere seconds.