People have never been very good at making passwords - just ask our tech team. And now, thanks to a list compiled by SplashData, we have definitive proof. Pulling from data made public by hackers over the course of 2013, SplashData has sorted through millions of stolen passwords to find the top 25 most common login details.
People have never been very good at making passwords - just ask our tech team. And now, thanks to a list compiled by SplashData, we have definitive proof. Pulling from data made public by hackers over the course of 2013, SplashData has sorted through millions of stolen passwords to find the top 25 most common login details.
In an exciting development, "password" has failed to nab the top spot, breaking its years-long winning streak as number one. In its place we have "123456", which has made a breakthrough from runner-up in 2012.
Newcomer "azerty" threatens to usurp "qwerty" as the go-to keyboard mash password - "qwerty" better watch out. Some interesting nouns have also made the list: "monkey", "shadow", "sunshine" and "princess". I'd be interested in checking out the gender ratio stats for some of these.
Our advice at NTG is obviously to avoid using any and all of these passwords. So if you're using "princess" right now, you might want to rethink that. Sequential numbers are a particularly bad idea - hopefully no variation of "123456789" ever crosses your mind.
We also advise against using the name of the program or application in your password, which as you can see is embarrassingly common. The reoccurrance of Adobe-related phrases in this list is definitely linked to the 38 million Adobe accounts compromised by hackers in 2013, however the trend is obviously not limited to Adobe platforms.
We recommend using phrases rather than words, replacing letters with numbers where you can, and mixing up the lower case. So if you must use "princess", make it something more along the lines of "Fa1ryPr1nc3ss", and you're probably fine. Maybe throw in an @-sign for good measure.
We also recommend changing your company passwords regularly, and using different passwords across different applications. If that's too hard, there are a number of programs you can use for keeping track of them all. We like KeePass.
The list, for your viewing pleasure:
- 123456
- password
- 12345678
- qwerty
- abc123
- 123456789
- 111111
- 1234567
- iloveyou
- adobe123
- 123123
- admin
- 1234567890
- letmein
- photoshop
- 1234
- monkey
- shadow
- sunshine
- 12345
- password1
- princess
- azerty
- trustno1
- 000000
Look after your security. And if that's too hard, we can do that for you - that's what we do at NTG. Drop us an email, and we'll never let your staff use "qwerty" again.