The Easiest Passwords To Hack

| Technology

The Easiest Passwords To Hack

 

UK’s National Cyber Centre (NCSC) unveiled that millions of people are using passwords that are very easy to guess on their sensitive accounts.

The UK Cyber Survey exposed gaps in personal security knowledge which left people very vulnerable and in danger of being exploited online.

The research found that 23.3 million victim accounts used 123456 as their password making it the most commonly used passwords worldwide!

Unsurprisingly, most of the top 10 were variants of 1-9. NCSC listed the top 100,000 most common passwords but here’s the top 10:

1) 123456

2) 123456789

3) qwerty

4) password

5) 111111

6) 12345678

7) abc123

8) 1234567

9) password1

10) 12345

The most common name used as a password was ashley, followed by michael, daniel, jessica and charlie.

Football teams were also pretty high up on the list with Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd appearing.

And Blink 182 took the top spot for most commonly used music act at position 105.

The survey also showed that:

  • Only 15% of people said they knew “a great deal” how to protect themselves online.
  • 42% expected to lose money to online fraud by 2021.
  • 1 in 3 rely to some extent on friends and family for help on cyber security.
  • Young people tend to be more likely to be privacy conscious and careful of what details they share online.
  • Only 70% always use PINs and passwords for smart phones and tablets.
  • Less than half do not always use a strong, separate password for their main email account.

The NCSC urges everyone to use at least 3 random (but memorable) words as a password to ensure their accounts stay safe and secure.

To find out if your passwords made the list, here is the full list of the 100,000 most common passwords.

Luke Stanley