Those constant warnings passwords You have to be strong and it seems to be falling on deaf ears, as recent reports show that most people are still searching for the old, easy-to-guess combinations of passwords we’ve all seen already.
Electronic security researchers from Internet news (Opens in a new tab) It recently analyzed 56 million passwords that were hacked, leaked, or made their way onto the wider internet this year to identify any patterns.
As it turns out, we still like to use the “123456” sequence for the password, as it’s by far the most common with 111417 instances. Administrator is also one of the most popular, with nearly 17,000 entries, followed by root and guest.
Celebrity names, swear words
According to the study, people like to use different names in their login credentials. Famous football team names, personal names, celebrity names, names of months and days are all noted as being used frequently.
Users were also found to post obscenities, with specific foul language used in nearly 300,000 cases.
One problem with weak passwords is the fact that some products come with preset passwords, where developers expect end users to overwrite the factory settings with their own at their convenience.
In many cases, this never happens, and many applications and endpoints end up with easy-to-guess passwords for long periods of time.
“It is important for customers not to rely solely on developers to protect their credentials and personal data by adopting new online security habits, starting with creating strong passwords and being aware of cybersecurity,” said Mantas Sasnauskas, Head of Security Research at Cybernews. “Because there are so many interrelated services, even one leaked password can lead to many accesses, potential damage, and time-consuming recovery processes.”
To eliminate this risk factor, most of the big tech companies these days are building solutions that aim to replace the password, such as Apple’s password solution.