It will probably surprise no one that users continue to use weak passwords that are easily guessable. And if not guessable, they are at least quickly revealed by dictionary programs, rainbow tables and other cracking tools. I obtained a few of these attack kits to see how they fared against various password-generating schemes, and the results were not good. It may be time to eliminate passwords all together from federal government networks in favor of better forms of security.
What got me thinking about passwords is a recent report from NordPass that showed the most common passwords used in 2019. These were gathered from lists of compromised passwords obtained in data breaches throughout the year. Basically, hackers stole those lists of passwords and put them up for sale. They were obtained and analyzed for the report.
The same weak passwords topped the charts again, with 12345 being the most popular. That almost three million people still use the very first password that any script kiddie is going to guess is mind-blowing. But it also showed that some people were at least trying to use somewhat better passwords, though not by much. For example, 1q2w3e4r5t was number 62 on the list, so at least people were trying to be slick by using the popular keyboard run. But it’s not the secret they probably hoped it was, with 55,318 other users setting their password exactly the same.
There are some interesting password attempts on the list. The band One Direction must be doing pretty well because 30,388 people chose it—without a space or any capitalization—as their password. Jesus is still well-represented at number 151, protecting 34,220 accounts. But he’s not as popular as chocolate, at numbe ..
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