SplashData has published its annual list the most-used passwords and it makes for some entirely depressing reading.
Combed from an extensive list of data of over five million passwords leaked by hackers in 2017, the annual list of most-used passwords shows consistency with years past, confirming the widely-known notion that consumers continue to use weak passwords.
“123456” remains the most used password, as it has for the last four years. The list reveals that almost 10% of people online have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on 2017’s list while nearly three percent of internet users have used the worst password, 123456.
The new Star Wars trilogy unsurprisingly has plenty of fans, as do several common terms used in pop culture.
“Unfortunately, while the newest episode may be a fantastic addition to the Star Wars franchise, ‘starwars’ is a dangerous password to use,” said SplashData CEO Morgan Slain. “Hackers are using common terms from pop culture and sports to break into accounts online because they know many people are using those easy-to-remember words.”
Passphrases of twelve or more characters interspersed with mixed types of characters such as lower and upper cases are a simple way to ensure secure password practices. Using a password manager that generates random secure passwords is also recommended.
The top 25 passwords on the 2017 list.
- 123456(Unchanged)
- Password (Unchanged)
- 12345678 (Up 1)
- qwerty (Up 2)
- 12345 (Down 2)
- 123456789 (New)
- letmein (New)
- 1234567 (Unchanged)
- football (Down 4)
- iloveyou (New)
- admin (Up 4)
- welcome (Unchanged)
- monkey (New)
- login (Down 3)
- abc123 (Down 1)
- starwars (New)
- 123123 (New)
- dragon (Up 1)
- passw0rd (Down 1)
- master (Up 1)
- hello (New)
- freedom (New)
- whatever (New)
- qazwsx (New)
- trustno1 (New)
Click here for the complete list of the top 100 most used passwords.
Image credit: Pixabay.
