DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - The worst passwords of 2011: ‘password,’ ‘123456

**UJRonald** · 11-23-2011, 03:42 PM

Watch out your "password" - Don't get your computer hacked.

In spite of a constant drumbeat of news about hacking and cracking computer accounts, users still are employing extremely common and obvious phrases as passwords.

A compilation of the most commonly used — and potentially most insecure — passwords seen over the past year was recently drawn up by Splashdata and reported in Mashable. Splashdata found that incredibly enough; the leading password in use today is the word “password.” Interestingly, item number 23, “qazwsx,” which is the first three rows of keys typed vertically, counterbalances number 4 on the list, the keyboard lineup of “qwerty,”

The list closely parallels that developed close to two years ago by Imperva, showing that these terms never go out of vogue.

Here is this year’s list:
1. password 
2. 123456 
3.12345678 
4. qwerty
 5. abc123
 6. monkey 
7. 1234567 
8. letmein 
9. trustno1 
10. dragon 
11. baseball 
12. 111111
 13. iloveyou 
14. master 
15. sunshine 
16. ashley 
17. bailey 
18. passw0rd 
19. shadow 
20. 123123 
21. 654321 
22. superman 
23. qazwsx 
24. michael 
25. football

SmartPlanet colleague Tuan C. Nguyen provides a surprisingly simple technique for deriving a strong password that makes it difficult for hacking programs to arrive at the right brute force combination — employing a symbol in combination with an upper case and lower-case letter.

Not everyone thinks that strong passwords are the answer, however. In another study on passwords, a Microsoft researcher conducted a cost/benefit analysis of efforts to encourage stronger passwords, and questions whether the cost of strong password management outweighs the benefits.

The 25 worst passwords of 2011: ‘password,’ ‘123456′ | SmartPlanet

11-23-2011, 03:42 PM	#1
UJRonald Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 540 Senior Member	The worst passwords of 2011: ‘password,’ ‘123456 Watch out your "password" - Don't get your computer hacked. In spite of a constant drumbeat of news about hacking and cracking computer accounts, users still are employing extremely common and obvious phrases as passwords. A compilation of the most commonly used — and potentially most insecure — passwords seen over the past year was recently drawn up by Splashdata and reported in Mashable. Splashdata found that incredibly enough; the leading password in use today is the word “password.” Interestingly, item number 23, “qazwsx,” which is the first three rows of keys typed vertically, counterbalances number 4 on the list, the keyboard lineup of “qwerty,” The list closely parallels that developed close to two years ago by Imperva, showing that these terms never go out of vogue. Here is this year’s list: 1. password  2. 123456  3.12345678  4. qwerty  5. abc123  6. monkey  7. 1234567  8. letmein  9. trustno1  10. dragon  11. baseball  12. 111111  13. iloveyou  14. master  15. sunshine  16. ashley  17. bailey  18. passw0rd  19. shadow  20. 123123  21. 654321  22. superman  23. qazwsx  24. michael  25. football SmartPlanet colleague Tuan C. Nguyen provides a surprisingly simple technique for deriving a strong password that makes it difficult for hacking programs to arrive at the right brute force combination — employing a symbol in combination with an upper case and lower-case letter. Not everyone thinks that strong passwords are the answer, however. In another study on passwords, a Microsoft researcher conducted a cost/benefit analysis of efforts to encourage stronger passwords, and questions whether the cost of strong password management outweighs the benefits. The 25 worst passwords of 2011: ‘password,’ ‘123456′ \| SmartPlanet
	Quote