“Most Common Passwords“ by Jimmy Ruska is a great article on insecure passwords, which ones are the most common, and how easily they are hacked.
Ruska starts off by listing some of the most common passwords he has found. The list starts off with predictable numbers like “123456″ and “123″, followed by “123abc” and similar combinations, and then goes into common names, songs, musical acts, and other such predictable words. Is your password in Jimmy’s list?
The article also describes the many ways in which hackers can crack weak passwords. Dictionary attacks are very common — with the blazing fast speed of modern computers, it takes a very short amount of time to execute a brute force attack that takes millions of guesses at your password. After reading Ruska’s description of how passwords are cracked, what do you think are the odds that yours could be easily bypassed?
“Easy-to-remember” passwords lead to compromised e-mail and website accounts, financial loss, identity theft and many other crimes of which you never want to be a victim. Protect yourself from getting caught in these situations by getting rid of the ridiculous notion that you can’t remember a “complicated password”. Is remembering a string of letters, numbers and symbols really any different from learning to spell complicated words? Read “Create a Strong, Secure Password” to learn how to devise proper passwords and commit them to memory.
Link via “Most Common Passwords” by Daily Cup of Tech. Photo by rpongsaj used under a Creative Commons license.
