Are your passwords easy for hackers to guess ?

hollydolly

hollydolly

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  • The company NordPass has released its annual Most Common Passwords report
  • '123456' and 'password' are still among the most popular passwords in the UK
  • 'Guest', 'liverpool', 'qwerty', 'arsenal', 'chocolate' and 'monkey' also make the list
  • 83 per cent of passwords in this year's list can be cracked in less than a second
When it comes to setting our passwords, it appears many of us still don't take security that seriously.

That's because new research reveals that phrases including '123456', 'qwerty' and 'password' are still among the most popular around the world.

In the UK, 'password' has overtaken '123456' as the most used password this year, according to NordPass.

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For the first time, NordPass also analysed how pop culture trends influence our password choices.

Among the other most common passwords in the UK are 'guest', 'liverpool', 'qwerty', 'arsenal', '123456789', 'chocolate' and 'monkey'.

They may sound simple to remember, but the concern is how easy they are to hack.

Around 83 per cent of the passwords in this year's list can be cracked in less than a second, the research shows.

They include 'passw0rd', which is slightly less common than 'password' but no more secure.

Among women in Britain, 'charlie', 'tigger' and 'sunshine' were the most common, as well as 'password', 'qwerty' and '123456'.

Men, however, were more likely to have the likes of 'liverpool', 'arsenal' and 'chelsea' as their passwords, in reference to their favourite football team.

Using a name to secure accounts also remains a common practice of internet users.

In the UK, Charlie, Thomas, Jasper, George, and Jessica were top names used as passwords this year, while the world's most-used people names for password creation were Daniel, Thomas, Jordan, Michael, Marina, and Jessica.

Pre-configured passwords such as 'welcome' and 'guest' are also commonly used to secure accounts.

THE MOST COMMON PASSWORDS IN THE UK​


1. password
2. 123456
3. guest
4. liverpool
5. qwerty
6. arsenal
7. 123456789
8. password1
9. 12345
10. 12345678
11. chelsea
12. charlie
13. abc123
14. liverpool1
15. Parola12
16. football
17. monkey
18. chocolate
19. yuantuo2012
20. letmein

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Screenshot-2022-11-14-at-19-07-55-123456-and-passw-ord-are-STILL-among-most-popular-passw-ords-in.png

 

Passwords for some Internet or computer devices are of trivial concern while others very much not. For instance, one's home Internet firewall password to the outside public to all one's devices inside is especially important to be strong. As someone working in computer engineering for many years, it is ridiculous how stupidly many create passwords that reflects the low creative intelligence and wisdom of so many. Of course we occasionally read in the news where even tech admin people that ought to know better used some simple dumb word letting in ransomware hackers. Likewise all those that continually need to rely on password recovery processes that are security disasters waiting to happen. I personally have had an easy system creating many strong passwords I can recall from memory for years, but am sure not going to advertise what that is on a public web site.
 
I wrote a program in QBASIC that generated a random password of upper or lower case letters and numbers. It looped through all of the upper and lower case letters and numbers 0 through 9 until I pressed the space bar which then printed the last one. I would do ten of them and add some word at the end. It all goes into the black book.
 
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David777 said:
Passwords for some Internet or computer devices are of trivial concern while others very much not. For instance, one's home Internet firewall password to the outside public to all one's devices inside is especially important to be strong. As someone working in computer engineering for many years, it is ridiculous how stupidly many create passwords that reflects the low creative intelligence and wisdom of so many. Of course we occasionally read in the news where even tech admin people that ought to know better used some simple dumb word letting in ransomware hackers. Likewise all those that continually need to rely on password recovery processes that are security disasters waiting to happen. I personally have had an easy system creating many strong passwords I can recall from memory for years, but am sure not going to advertise what that is on a public web site.
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I did not know there was one. Tell us more please.
 
Murrmurr said:
Dumb passwords is why some websites offer that "two-auth" verification. I hate those....hate that extra step just to read an email or two. I always click "Remind me later" on those offers.
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Agreed, it's annoying but 2FA does take security to a much safer level.
Are your passwords easy for hackers to guess ?
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No. But if someone has physical access to your computer, they own it.
For retail or financial websites all a hacker has to do is steal that websites database, and all the "difficult" passwords in the world won't do you any good, as they are likely stored in PLAIN TEXT, and not encrypted.
 
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I have a whole file of computer generated passwords that I circulate on my accounts, and it mostly does not include common combinations of letters making common words. Strangely enough, even though I've been putting in special characters for years, suddenly a lot of sites are banning special characters. I wonder why?
 
When I was working I needed access to a number of customer websites. The problem was they all wanted me to change my passwords every 6 months.I came up with a clever way to do it.
I have a book by Michael Jackson listing all the single malt distilleries in Scotland. I started with Abelour12 and worked my way through.
 
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rasmusjc said:
I have a whole file of computer generated passwords that I circulate on my accounts, and it mostly does not include common combinations of letters making common words. Strangely enough, even though I've been putting in special characters for years, suddenly a lot of sites are banning special characters. I wonder why?
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That is peculiar, the only thing I can think of is that symbols such as "%", "@", "^", "#" or "{ }" get confused either at the website login, or in storing to the database.
 
Newsflash! Hackers don't "guess" your passwords. They have their methods for getting passwords but guessing isn't one of them.

Make your passwords with no rhyme or reason and incorporate symbols, upper and lower case letters, within the "words".

This info on good authority. DS is a cyber security expert, complete with credentials.
 
It makes me think bakc to my working days. Remember that old timey thing called a rolodex. We never saved a password on a website. We all had a rolodex. We changed passwords every 3 month. That information as never shared by email. New passwords were shared at a quarterly meeting to staff. Keep in mind there were only 5 or 6 of us. We worked with so many vendors that things had to kept safe. I was in the printing business.

A lot of we worked on was printing of checks for large corporations, government offices both in and out of state, voter registrations for various counties, jury summons for special trials. When you have access to that kind of information you must be diligent in protecting information. The companies I worked for were also diligent in checking all information/references in all emloyees that were hired.

I really enjoyed my work and took great pride in helping our clients avoid fraud of any kind.
There is a lot to be said of people who enjoy theirs jobs and want to do the right thing, even if it causes a problem that has to be solved. That happened many times, but in the end the client was protected. If they did not take the necessary steps, we would not accept the job.
 


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