ARE YOU GUILTY OF USING ONE OF THE ‘WORST PASSWORDS’?

Compiled by password management firm SplashData, the annual list consisting of the world’s worst password for 2015 has some shocking revelations. A great deal of internet users are still using a huge number of very weak passwords, among them being password, qwerty, and the number one spot going to 123456 – again!

Now I’m pretty sure you’re wondering why I’m talking about findings from a report conducted in 2015 in the middle of 2016 – but there’s good reason for this. People are still using weak passwords, and it’s not only us mere mortals who are guilty.

Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook King/CEO) this year had his Twitter and Pinterest accounts broken into by a group of hackers called OurMine, after his password was discovered in a breach of stolen LinkedIn passwords. Whilst he didn’t use a password quite as feeble as qwerty, Zuckerberg is believed to have used the equally weak dadada,(yes, really) which. According to The Telegraph “would take under 25 seconds for a brute force attack to crack it, according to one password checker”.

Luckily for Zuckerberg the group of hackers, OurMine, only wanted to let the world know how easy it was to break into his account as they didn’t expose or tweet anything harmful.

The findings from SplashData were compiled from over 2 million leaked passwords of American and Western European internet users during 2015, and while the list of worst passwords of 2015 found that users were using longer passwords, and changing, for example, an “o” in password to a zero – “passw0rd”, this still leaves them vulnerable to identity theft from hackers.

“We have seen an effort by many people to be more secure by adding characters to passwords, but if these longer passwords are based on simple patterns they will put you in just as much risk of having your identity stolen by hackers.” Chief Executive Officer SplashData, Morgan Slain  said in a statement.

Time to stop using the worst passwords of 2015!

Remembering a different, strong password for each online account is, admittedly, not always the easiest thing to do, even for the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. How many times have you entered an incorrect password over and over again? I get it. But it’s even worse to have a weak password because that puts you at risk.

How long does it take to crack a weak password? According to Mr David Siah, of Trend Micro Singapore, just “10 minutes”, by using one of the many cyber security tools available online. Siah says that by “adding just one capital letter and an asterisk increases the cracking time for an eight-letter password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries.”

So, what were the worst passwords of 2015?

Here it is. The full list of the worst passwords of 2015, from SplashData  enjoy and please, do no use!

123456

password

12345678

qwerty

12345

123456789

football

1234

1234567

baseball

welcome

1234567890

abc123

111111

1qaz2wsx

dragon

master

monkey

letmein

login

princess

qwertyuiop

solo

passw0rd

Starwars

1. And I’m going to add dadada to this list – just in case any of you are tempted!

Some other things to remember.

• – Create a strong, secure password. There are plenty of online tips to help get you started. You can, of course, check out our tips on how to create a strong password.
• – Don’t use the same password for each account. If a hacker gains access to one of your accounts, they would have the passwords for all of your others
• – Use a password manager tool and save your brain from having to remember a multitude of passwords
• – Delete any online accounts you no longer use. If a hacker breaks into it, and you use the same password for your active accounts, they could potentially gain access
• – Change your password regularly

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