Predictable Passwords Remain Popular Despite Increased Security Breaches

Despite the increase of publicized data breaches and hacking, security researchers have found that most people’s online security habits remain relatively unchanged including their choice of passwords to access online services. Keeper Security has analyzed over 10 million passwords that have become public from these data breaches within 2016 alone and it seems to suggest the public’s limit when it comes to security education and further steps must be taken by IT administrators and website operators themselves to increase security. This also shows why brute force hacking remains a reliable way of gaining entry because of user predictability. Here is the top 25 most commonly used passwords according to Keeper:

• 123456
• 123456789
• qwerty
• 12345678
• 111111
• 1234567890
• 1234567
• password
• 123123
• 987654321
• qwertyuiop
• mynoob
• 123321
• 666666
• 18atcskd2w
• 7777777
• 1q2w3e4r
• 654321
• 555555
• 3rjs1la7qe
• google
• 1q2w3e4r5t
• 123qwe
• zxcvbnm
• 1q2w3e

Four of the top ten passwords are all under six character and many websites should implement safety measures to not accept such types of passwords. At the top of the list is “123456” which comprises of 17% of all passwords in the list. Also, security experts such as Graham Curley of Tripwire suggests that the presence of passwords like “18atcskd2w” and “3rjs1la7qe” are indication that these are dummy passwords utilized by many spam bots when creating public e-mail accounts which are then used to spam in forums. Analysis of the data breaches shows that many Email providers seem to not put in more effort in curbing the use of their services for spam as well.