There are habits that do not change. Despite the fact that strategies to violate the privacy of our mobile devices and digital services are the order of the day and the recommendations to create strong passwords against these attacks are not lacking, many users still prioritize passwords that are easy to remember and to discover.
Thus, the combination “123456” has been the common point that connects the majority of users whose accounts in some digital service have been hacked. According to the conclusion of a recent study on hacked logins of 42 revealed passwords, at least one is “123456”.
No, “123456” is not a strong password
A shared post on GitHub contains the compilation of passwords for various databases published after they were violated. The accounts and data have been extracted from the popular pages that serve this information after entering our email.
Based on data from the study of more than a billion passwords, only 168,919,919 were unique. While the rest respond to the following characteristics:
- Out of over a billion passwords, 7 million was ‘123456’.
- 29% of passwords were made up of letters.
- 13% of passwords were made up of numbers.
- Only 12% contained a special character.
- The average password is 9 characters long.
- 34% of all passwords end with numbers and only 4% of all passwords start with numbers.
Using simple passwords increases the chances that they will be guessed by attackers, especially when it comes to letter and number sequences. Therefore, the alternate use of characters, special characters and a minimum length of 8 digits in passwords is constantly recommended.
While for those who prefer to be one hundred percent sure of their choice, there are many password management services that guarantee combinations with all security measures in order.