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Who's using 'password' as a password? TOO MANY OF YOU

Study of hacked websites reveals top 25 common passphrases

A study to find the top 25 leaked passwords of 2012 has revealed too many people are still using "password", "123456" and "12345678" for their login credentials.

The table was compiled from plain-text passwords and weak unsalted password hashes lifted from compromised databases and dumped online by Anonymous hacktivists and other miscreants. The new entries in this year's list of common passwords are "welcome", "jesus", "ninja", "mustang" and "password1".

This year the dataset was boosted by several high-profile password security breaches at major websites including Yahoo!, LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm.

Here's the table of the top 25 most common leaked web passwords, with the change in position from last year in brackets:

  1. password (unchanged)
  2. 123456 (unchanged)
  3. 12345678 (unchanged)
  4. abc123 (up one)
  5. qwerty (down one)
  6. monkey (unchanged)
  7. letmein (up one)
  8. dragon (up two)
  9. 111111 (up three)
  10. baseball (up one)
  11. iloveyou (up two)
  12. trustno1 (down three)
  13. 1234567 (down six)
  14. sunshine (up one)
  15. master (down one)
  16. 123123 (up four)
  17. welcome (new entry!)
  18. shadow (up one)
  19. ashley (down three)
  20. football (up five)
  21. jesus (new entry!)
  22. michael (up two)
  23. ninja (new entry!)
  24. mustang (new entry!)
  25. password1 (new entry!)

The roundup, produced by password app biz SplashData, put "123456" in the number two slot for 2012; the same sequence was used by 37 per cent of all user accounts at the Anonymous-hacked Greek finance ministry.

Meanwhile, Kaspersky Lab published a summary of terrible password choices: trendy words like ninja, sports-themed passwords, names of loved ones or pets are each a big no-no. A good primer on how to devise hard to crack passwords can be found in a recent article by the New York Times here. ®

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