Top 10 Hacker's Favourite Passwords

Internet users are leaving the door to their online accounts wide open, with an analysis of tens of millions of leaked passwords revealing the most common are basic number strings such as “123456″ and obvious keywords including “password” and “abc123″. What does this means? It means hackers are not necessary a superbeing clever of hacking other people’s people password but careless Internet users who used easily-guessed passwords that make their hacking job an easy meal.

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Data security provider Imperva, which analysed the passwords in a new report, says such laziness is often equivalent to having no locks on the account at all as simple passwords are easily broken using “brute force” techniques.

The report, Consumer Password Worst Practices, analysed 32 million passwords that were exposed in a Rockyou.com breach in December.

Not only did it expose commonly used passwords, but it was also similar to a 1990 Unix study, which showed a password selection that had a similar pattern to that which consumers use today.

The company estimates that putting minimal effort into a password means that a hacker can access a new account every second or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes.

The shortness and simplicity of passwords means many users select credentials that will make them susceptible to basic forms of cyber attacks known as “brute force attacks”.

For companies, password insecurity can have serious consequences. Employees using the same passwords on Facebook and also in the workplace bring the possibility of compromising the system, especially if it’s as easy to crack as “123456″.

Top 10 commonly used passwords and number of users with it

1. 123456 (290,731)

2. 12345 (79,078)

3. 123456789 (76,790)

4. Password (61,958)

5. iloveyou (51,622)

6. princess (35,231)

7. rockyou (22,588)

8. 1234567 (21,726)

9. 12345678 (20,553)

10. abc123 (17,542)

Recommended reading:
* Google Trends Hacked – Google funds terrorism
* Hacking iPhone 3GS Encryption
* How to use SkyGrabber to hack U.S. Predator drones

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