PasswordsSplashData releases annual “Worst Passwords” list -- “123456” maintains top spot

Published 20 January 2016

SplashData has announced its annual list of the twenty-five most common passwords found on the Internet — thus making them the “Worst Passwords” that will expose anybody to being hacked or having their identities stolen. The 2014 list of worst passwords demonstrates the importance of keeping names, simple numeric patterns, sports, and swear words out of your passwords. In this year’s report – the company’s fourth annual report — compiled from more than 3.3 million leaked passwords during the year, “123456”and “password” continue to hold the top two spots that they have held each year since the first list in 2011. Other passwords in the top 10 include “qwerty,” “dragon,” and “football.”

Common passwords make a hackers job much easier // Source: commons.wikimedia.org

SplashData has announced its annual list of the twenty-five most common passwords found on the Internet — thus making them the “Worst Passwords” that will expose anybody to being hacked or having their identities stolen. The 2014 list of worst passwords demonstrates the importance of keeping names, simple numeric patterns, sports, and swear words out of your passwords. In this year’s report – the company’s fourth annual report — compiled from more than 3.3 million leaked passwords during the year, “123456”and “password” continue to hold the top two spots that they have held each year since the first list in 2011. Other passwords in the top 10 include “qwerty,” “dragon,” and “football.”

As in past years’ lists, simple numerical passwords remain common, with nine of the top 25 passwords on the 2014 list consisting numbers only.

Passwords appearing for the first time on SplashData’s list include “696969” and “batman.”

While Valentine’s Day is less than a month away, “iloveyou” is one of the nine passwords from 2013 to fall off the 2014 list.

SplashData notes that the passwords evaluated for the 2014 list were mostly held by users in North America and Western Europe. In 2014, millions of passwords from Russian accounts were also leaked, but these passwords were not included in the analysis.

SplashData’s list of frequently used passwords shows that many people continue to put themselves at risk by using weak, easily guessable passwords.

“Passwords based on simple patterns on your keyboard remain popular despite how weak they are,” said Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData. “Any password using numbers alone should be avoided, especially sequences. As more Web sites require stronger passwords or combinations of letters and numbers, longer keyboard patterns are becoming common passwords, and they are still not secure.”

For example, users should avoid a sequence such as “qwertyuiop,” which is the top row of letters on a standard keyboard, or “1qaz2wsx” which comprises the first two ‘columns’ of numbers and letters on a keyboard.

Other tips from a review of this year’s Worst Passwords List include:

  • Do not use a favorite sport as your password — “baseball” and “football” are in top 10, and “hockey,” “soccer,” and “golfer” are in the top 100. Do not use a favorite team either, as “yankees,” “eagles,” “steelers,” “rangers,” and “lakers” are all in the top 100.
  • Do not use your birthday or especially just your birth year — 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992 are all in the top 100.
  • While baby name books are popular for naming children, do not use them as sources for picking passwords. Common names such as “michael,” “jennifer,” “thomas,” “jordan,” “hunter,” “michelle,” “charlie,” “andrew,” and “daniel” are all in the top 50.

Also in the top 100 are swear words and phrases, hobbies, famous athletes, car brands, and film names.

This is the first year that SplashData has collaborated on the list with Mark Burnett, online security expert and author of “Perfect Passwords” (http://www.xato.net).

“The bad news from my research is that this year’s most commonly used passwords are pretty consistent with prior years,” Burnett said. “The good news is that it appears that more people are moving away from using these passwords. In 2014, the top 25 passwords represented about 2.2 percent of passwords exposed. While still frightening, that’s the lowest percentage of people using the most common passwords I have seen in recent studies.”

SplashData, provider of the SplashIDline of password management applications, releases its annual list in an effort to encourage the adoption of stronger passwords. Slain says, “As always, we hope that with more publicity about how risky it is to use weak passwords, more people will start taking simple steps to protect themselves by using stronger passwords and using different passwords for different websites.”

SplashData’s “Worst Passwords of 2014”:

Rank

Password

Change from 2013

1

123456

No Change

2

password

No Change

3

12345

Up 17

4

12345678

Down 1

5

qwerty

Down 1

6

123456789

No Change

7

1234

Up 9

8

baseball

New

9

dragon

New

10

football

New

11

1234567

Down 4

12

monkey

Up 5

13

letmein

Up 1

14

abc123

Down 9

15

111111

Down 8

16

mustang

New

17

access

New

18

shadow

Unchanged

19

master

New

20

michael

New

21

superman

New

22

696969

New

23

123123

Down 12

24

batman

New

25

trustno1

Down 1

SplashData says it offers three simple tips to be safer from hackers online:

  • Use passwords of eight characters or more with mixed types of characters.
  • Avoid using the same username/password combination for multiple websites.
  • Use a password manager such as SplashID to organize and protect passwords, generate random passwords, and automatically log into Web sites.