Worst Passwords of 2018 revealed
If you use one of these, your accounts are accessible in less than a minute. The worst passwords of 2018 have been announced. And while some of them are worryingly simple, some are surprisingly complex.
The full list looks like this:
1) 123456
2) password
3) 123456789
4) 12345678
5) 12345
6) 111111
7) 1234567
8) sunshine
9) qwerty
10) iloveyou
11) princess
12) admin
13) welcome
14) 666666
15) abc123
16) football
17) 123123
18) monkey
19) 654321
20) !@#$%^&*
21) charlie
22) aa123456s
23) donald
24) password1
25) qwerty123
TESTING PASSWORD SECURITY
Using this test to simulate a brute force attack, all of these passwords could be hacked in less than five minutes. Some took the software less than a second to break. This is somewhat surprising given that some like ‘!@#$%^&*’ use what some might assume were quite obscure symbols. However, this indicates the sophistication of hacking technology.
Add to this the number data breaches that occur each year and users need to think hard about securing their computers with strong password combinations.
IMPROVING PASSWORDS
Steps to improve password security has made the news this year. This included reports from the Western Australian Government taking action after it discovered one in five of its 234,000 staff were using weak passwords. This included over 1,400 members of staff all using ‘Password123’ as their password to get into its government systems.
And password security is such an important issue that California has even legislated against the use of weak passwords for manufacturers of internet-connected devices.
If you are looking to create a new password our advice is:
- Use lines from a favourite film or book
- Use words from foreign languages, or even the phonetic spelling of such words
- For highly secure systems use ALT key special characters – not # or @, but Æ or Ø (find ALT key commands here)
To discuss other IT security solutions, such as two-factor authentication, please get in touch with us at Arc Systems.