There’s been more confirmation that when it
comes to online security, some people are just
asking to be hacked. By examining accounts
from a leaked Yahoo database, featuring
obsolete accounts from a 2012 voice calling
service, researchers put together a list of the ten
most commonly used passwords.
The most popular password favored by Yahoo
users was “123456.” If that isn’t enough to
make you facepalm, the second most common
was the brilliant “password.” This was followed
by “welcome” in third, and, weirdly, “ninja” in
fourth position.
Mixing numbers and letters is often
recommended when it comes to creating strong
passwords, but “abc123,” which is the fifth most
popular entry, is a pretty weak example of this
practice. The next two entries are variations of
the number one password – “123456789” at six
and “12345678” at seven.
The next two passwords on the list are actual
words - “sunshine” (eighth) and “princess” (ninth)
– while the final place is occupied by the terrible
“qwerty.”
Dr Jeff Yan, co-author of a paper on password
cracking and a senior computing lecturer at
Lancaster University in the UK, compiled the list.
He told the Daily Mail Online: “Why do [some]
use such obvious passwords? A main reason I
think is that they’re either unaware of or don’t
understand the risks of online security.”
“Just like everybody knows what one should do
when red lights are on in the road, eventually
everybody will know 123456 or the like is not a
good password choice,” he added.
Many of the other passwords in the database
were made up of simple combinations of users’
names, ages, and birthdates.
In addition to revealing the commonly-used
passwords, the University researchers, along
with those from China’s Peking and Fujian
Normal Universities, created algorithms that can
crack passwords.
Based on attackers having access to different
personal information, they guessed passwords
for more than 73 percent of users’ accounts.
Even the more tech-savvy weren’t safe; a third
of their passwords were cracked within 100
guesses.
source: www.getontopc.com/2016/11/database-leak-reveals-10-terrible.html?m=1