Keeper Security, a cybersecurity company that develops a password management software, has recently released a list of the most common passwords of 2016.
The list was determined by more than 10 million passwords than became public through data breaches last year, among the companies that fell victim to such incidents include LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Target.
In a recent blog post, the company revealed that the top 25 most popular passwords are series of letters and numbers that have been appearing on lists since 2011. Passwords such as “12345,” “qwerty,” “google” and the extremely obvious “password” all made the list — again. “123456” is being used by in incredible 17 percent of users in the study.
Keeper also mentioned that four of the top 10 passwords on the list – and seven of the top 15 – are six characters or shorter. “This is stunning in light of the fact that, as we’ve reported, today’s brute-force cracking software and hardware can unscramble those passwords in seconds. Website operators that permit such flimsy protection are either reckless or lazy,” said the company in the blog post.
The firm has also noted the presence of passwords like “1q2w3e4r” and “123qwe”, which according to them, indicates that some users attempt to use unpredictable patterns to secure passwords, but their efforts are weak at best. “Dictionary-based password crackers know to look for sequential key variations. At best, it sets them back only a few seconds,” it said.
“We can criticise all we want about the chronic failure of users to employ strong passwords. After all, it’s in the user’s best interests to do so. But the bigger responsibility lies with website owners who fail to enforce the most basic password complexity policies. It isn’t hard to do, but the list makes it clear that many still don’t bother,” said Keeper.
