Top 200 weakest passwords
Without a doubt one of the big security problems continues to be the "user", since with the simple fact of using weak passwords despite the large amount of tools and information that exists. According to experts, This can be attributed to laziness, difficulty remembering complex strings of characters or simply due to "ignorance."
And is that with The new survey carried out by NordPass reveals that the worst password most used in the world in 2023 is "123456". The top 10 most used passwords have not changed much, since we continue to find the same passwords used year after year.
NordPass, the password management tool, partnered with independent cybersecurity incident researchers to release their study on the 200 most used passwords in 2023
It is mentioned that evaluated a 4.3 TB database extracted from various sources publicly available, including the dark web. The study covers 35 countries and the researchers classified the data into different sectors, allowing them to perform country-based statistical analyses. NordPass only received statistical information from researchers, which does not refer to the personal data of Internet users.
At NordPass we have been tracking password usage habits for five years. Sometimes it seems like the classics never die. However, this year there may be some surprises. We have observed the same pattern, especially in certain platform categories.
NordPass mentions that among the 20 of the most common passwords in the world, 17 can be cracked in less than a second and in this top the password "admin", which is the default password on many devices, is simply not replaced by something else. Interestingly, adding "123" to the end of "admin" makes the latter more secure and inserting the "at" (@) between the word and the numbers increases the hacking time to one hour.
Moreover, It is important to mention that NordPass also revealed the most common passwords by “categories.” The number one password for e-commerce sites, email accounts, electronic devices and streaming services is also "123456", while "UNKNOWN" and "123456" take the top spots for social media platforms, financial accounts and smartphones . Names are also popular passwords among users around the world. “Elizabeth” is the second most used password in Austria this year, while “Katerina” is 11th in Greece.
The love for football is not far behind and is reflected in the list of passwords, and according to the report, the names of the English Premier League football clubs "liverpool", "arsenal" and "chelsea" occupy the 4th, 6th and 10th place respectively in the list of most used passwords in England.
As for the Asian giant "China", many of us might think that the list could differ, but this is not the case since at least 11 of the top 20 follow the general trend. NordPass explains: “Chinese internet users often use numbers in their passwords “123456”, which is the most used password in the country, other number sequences, such as “111111”, “000000” and “12345678” are also very popular” .
And although we could continue expanding country by country, this would result in something boring for you, and that is why we invite you, if you are interested in learning more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.
The portal warns in particular:
«If you use a password made up of numbers or lowercase letters, the time needed to hack it will be just as short. To effectively protect your account, you must use a strong password. Thus, a password of 11 characters, with numbers, upper and lower case letters, as well as symbols, can last around 3 years before being hacked. But it's important to keep in mind that even strong passwords are not foolproof. For added security, opt for a mixed password of at least 17 characters.
Finally, we recommend to all our dear readers to use the different existing solutions to improve the security of their devices and accounts, such as password managers, use of 2FA, tokens, security keys, among others.