After a year filled with hacks and exploits, you would think we would learn to be more cyber-literate as the year ends. This year's list of the 200 most popular passwords shows us that we are just as dumb as we have ever been. Maybe even dumber.
All of us know how bad our passwords are, but we are put on blast in 2020 by the password manager for using phrases like "123456" and "qwerty" as login credentials. We knew they were bad for a long time, and have seen them on lists of the most popular passwords for years.
The heckling didn't work. The offenders were on the top 20 list for this year. The company estimates that it would be relatively easy for a coder to crack the number-mashing on your keyboard. Password and ABC123 are just as easy to crack as other popular choices.
There are other less obviouspasswords such as "iloveyou," "baseball," and "dragon" that are equally bad. Baseball is not a real password. Most of the other half-assed attempts at cybersecurity that were unfortunate enough to get a spot on the list are not.
Here are the top 20 most popular passwords from around the world.
1. A number.
2. The number 123456.
3. 12345
4.
Password 5.
6. The number 12345678.
7. 111111
8. 123123
9. A number.
10. The number 1234567.
11.
12. 0000.
13. 1q2w3e
14.
15.
Password 1
17. 1234
18.
19. 123321
Password123
Right? The best passwords can take up to 3 hours to be cracked, but most of them can be done in less than one second.
Karklys is baffled and sad. Karklys said that people still don't maintain proper password hygiene. Passwords are the gateway to our digital lives, and with us spending more and more time online, it's becoming enormously important to take better care of our cybersecurity.
Beyond passwords, this means keeping an eye on your accounts for suspicious activity and using multi-factor authentication whenever you can. It means investing in strong passwords that take longer than a second to crack. If your password is still a password, then you need to change it immediately.
