Remember the silly passwords web security pundits have been worrying about for years? The ones people have finally abandoned? Yeah, let’s talk about that.
“Password” is no longer the most popular password. According to industry heavyweight SplashData, it’s the second most popular password, having been bumped by the 6-digit ironclad option of “123456” in the last year.
In other words, feeble passwords still rule the roost.
The data is sourced from the infamous Adobe breach, and reveals some fantastic entries. Here are the top 10:
1 | 123456 | Up 1 |
2 | password | Down 1 |
3 | 12345678 | Unchanged |
4 | qwerty | Up 1 |
5 | abc123 | Down 1 |
6 | 123456789 | New |
7 | 111111 | Up 2 |
8 | 1234567 | Up 5 |
9 | iloveyou | Up 2 |
10 | adobe123 | New |
The moral of the story? Binary code may not be the best option.
The basics of password security remains. Longer passwords are better; SplashData suggests 8 mixed characters or more. Better yet, use pass-phrases. Not using the same password on multiple sites is probably smart.
I use a random password generator (SplashData’s SplashID has one included in its password safe software) and also add in non-English phrases. I also use software to save and encrypt these entries locally. My policy is to act like nothing is truly un-hackable, but to make it as hard as possible for troublemakers to get access to my stuff.
Is/are your password(s) reasonably secure?
[via SplashData Blog | Image via Lulu Hoeller via Flickr Creative Commons]
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