A research conducted by a Turkish ethical hacker Ata Hakçıl has unveiled the worst passwords people use to protect their systems and online accounts in 2020.
According to him, these passwords are easy to guess by a novice hacker and simple to generate using dictionary attack tools.
The research showed that whether you use the passwords to protect your social media account or to access your e-market platforms, there are hundreds of thousands of hackers online who are interested to test their knowledge and hacking skill on you.
These novice hackers are mostly university students who may not be interested in your money or reputations online, but are ready to challenge the power of your online protection.
They also make it easy for internet fraudsters popularly known as ‘Yahoo boys’ to have access to your online banking platform to steal your information.
The novice among them, reportedly, use social engineering to deceive you on social media, but many others use password cracking tools to gain access to your account.
Mr. Hackil tested over one billion accounts and filtered about 300 million of them as either corrupt or test accounts. This means that he practically tested over 700 million accounts.
Among all the passwords he got, Hackil found out that ‘123456’ topped the list of the most common passwords on the internet and is being used to protect about seven Million accounts in 2020.
This is the same password that notoriously remains at the top since the emergence of social media.
“Most common 1000 passwords cover 6.607 per cent of all the passwords. With most common one million passwords, hit-rate is at 36.28 per cent, and with most common 10 million passwords hit rate is at 54.00 per cent,” he stated.
People who use 123456 or similar passwords like “abcde”, “qwerty”, etc, are the ones always complaining about losing their accounts to someone they do not know. Others use their phone numbers to protect their accounts.
Other simple-to-guess passwords include the use of “your name +123”, birthday, “pet name + 12345” or passwords that use a similar formula.
List of Worst Passwords in 2020
According to Hackil, If your password is in the list below, your account is not safe.
- 123456
- 123456789
- password
- qwerty
- 12345678
- 12345
- 123123
- 111111
- 1234
- 1234567890
- 1234567
- abc123
- 1q2w3e4r5t
- q1w2e3r4t5y6
- iloveyou
- 123
- 0
- 123321
- 1q2w3e4r
- qwertyuiop
- 654321
- qwerty123
- 1qaz2wsx3edc
- password1
- 1qaz2wsx
- 666666
- dragon
- ashley
- princess
- 987654321
- 123qwe
- 159753
- monkey
- q1w2e3r4
- zxcvbnm
- 123123123
- asdfghjkl
- pokemon
- football
- killer
- 112233
- michael
- shadow
- 121212
- daniel
- asdasd
- qazwsx
- 1234qwer
- superman
- 123456a
- azerty
- qwe123
- master
- 7777777
- sunshine
- N0=Acc3ss
- 1q2w3e
- abcd1234
- 1234561
- computer
- f***you
- aaaaaa
- 555555
- asdfgh
- asd123
- baseball
- 123456789
- charlie
- 123654
- qwer1234
- naruto
- a123456
- jessica
- soccer
- jordan
- liverpool
- thomas
- lol123
- michelle
- 123abc
- nicole
- 11111111
- starwars
- samsung
- 1111
- secret
- joshua
- 123456789a
- andrew
- 222222
- q1w2e3r4t5
- 147258369
- hunter
- Password
- qazwsxedc
- lovely
- 999999
- jennifer
- letmein
- tigger
Creating Strong Passwords
There are hundreds of free password cracking tools on the internet that could be downloaded by any novice hacker to gain control of your account.
However, cyber security experts have noted that these password cracking tools find it very difficult to guess lengthy gibberish random letters passwords with a mix of upper and lowercase letters.
Experts advise that you should use at least 12 to 20 long gibberish that has letters, digits, punctuations and special characters.
Above all you should always be conscious of social engineering – the use of deception to collect your password. You should never share your password with anyone.
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