"Password" Ranks First in Worst Password List of 2012

[sethisjimmy]

password1?

Well you've got to give them credit for trying.

 

[I.Muir]

I made a good password i think
I spammed random stuff onto my keyboard and threw in a few numbers about it
I can type it just as fast as the third time if I don't bother adding caps and hashes at random intervals

 

[The Goat Tsar]

So "123456" and "12345678" are 2nd and 3rd, but "1234567" is 13th? Is it really that much of an improvement?

 

[Mamzelle_Kat]

Weird, no "admin" in this list. I would've expected it.

 

[orangeapples]

Wow, have none of these people heard of having capital letters? That alone would boost your password strength from low to medium.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Why do I get the feeling that the password Jesus were used by religious people or people who like that name.

 

[Baldr]

Sweet Password1234 is safe and I don't have to remove the sticky note from the desk.

 

[Smertnik]

So does this mean Michael and Ashley are the two most favourite and/or most used names?

 

[Redingold]

I just pick my passwords randomly out of a dictionary. Then they're functionally unguessable.

 

[DugMachine]

I might use only 2 different passwords but they're fucked up words I made up so I'm 100% confident nobody will ever figure them out. Only time I was hacked was when I had a pretty unoriginal password.

 

[Staskala]

I just pick my passwords randomly out of a dictionary. Then they're functionally unguessable.

Actually, that's about as easy to crack as it gets. Hackers have dictionaries too, you know. A brute force approach that automatically goes through the entire dictionary takes barely 2 minutes, maybe 10 if you include common variations and randomly placed capital letters. Not to mention that even an 8 year old can run such a script.
So change it if your stuff is actually important.

 

[JonB]

How is it that '123456' and '12345678' are in 2nd and 3rd positions respectively, whilst '1234567' lags behind in 13th? 13th!

Never trust an odd number. Not in a password, not anywhere.

 

[UNHchabo]

I have a theory that the reason most of these passwords that hackers publish are weak is that people intentionally choose weak passwords for "general purpose" on most websites. Then they save their strong passwords for when they're really needed, like banking or a work account.

I mean, who really cares enough about their Gawker account to make it a random 15-character string?

 

[UNHchabo]

So "123456" and "12345678" are 2nd and 3rd, but "1234567" is 13th? Is it really that much of an improvement?

It's cause most sites that have a minimum password length either specify 6 or 8 characters.

 

[rayen020]

I still stick to the XKCD password genteration system. [http://xkcd.com/936/]

 

[rayen020]

michael i can sorta see michael jordan, michael the archangel, but ashley is just sorta out of left field to me, cannot imagine where that comes from beating jesus, who apparently is new on the list, and is down 3 i guess from the last list.

wonder if there is some glorious female named ashley that everyone is so in love with hey name all their pw after this person. Or there is going to be a staggering number of girls growing up with the name ashley since using your daughters/childs name for a pw is pretty common.

But all my life i cannot even recall meeting many ashleys.

Might a regional thing. I lived in the south US and every school i attended i had at least one ashley in my class and at least three ashleys in my school (that isn't impressive until you know i went to a special school where my total 8th grade class size was 40 people in middle school) And i'm currently married to an ashley (although she spells it ashleigh).

 

[zz_]

I still stick to the XKCD password genteration system. [http://xkcd.com/936/]

Yeah I've been using this method for a while as well. I mean by now I have like 15 different passwords I use for stuff, and having them all be randomized 18 letter gibberish is just too much of a pain, even if I am quite good at memorizing sequences.

2QhzgmUwEnVYS9T57q is dead, long live carrotfacebudgetspooncrash!

 

[Queen Michael]

Why sunshine?

 

[Inconspicuous Trenchcoat]

I have a base password with 8 variations based off a specific rhyming scheme, and another 5 passwords that are just random characters, symbols and numbers currently in use. But I have a hard time remembering my license plate.

My head is so full of useless information