Experts warned the public to think twice before choosing a password for emails, online bank accounts and airline tickets. The warning was made after a study in the United States showed that passwords that show no imagination or distinctiveness are easy prey for information pirates.
The study published by Information Week used a statistical analysis of 28,000 passwords recently stolen from a popular US website and posted on the Internet. The scary part of the result revealed that people often do the easy thing.
It found that 16 percent took a first name as a password, often their own or one of their children. Another 14 percent relied on the easiest keyboard combination to remember their passwords, such as “1234″ or “12345678.” For those using English keyboards, “QWERTY”, was popular. Likewise, “AZERTY” scored with people with European keyboards.
Five percent of the stolen passwords were names of television shows or stars popular with young people like “hannah,” inspired by singer Hannah Montana. “Pokemon,” “Matrix,” and “Ironman” were others.
The word “password” or easy to guess variations like “password1″ accounted for four percent.
Three percent of the passwords expressed attitudes like “I don’t care,” “Whatever,” “Yes” or “No.”
There were sentimental choices — “Iloveyou” — and their opposite — “Ihateyou.”
Robert Graham, of the company Errata Security, which did the analysis and published the conclusions, advises that to better protect against cyber intrusions: “choose a password that is longer than eight characters with one capital letter and one symbol.”
The study published by Information Week used a statistical analysis of 28,000 passwords recently stolen from a popular US website and posted on the Internet. The scary part of the result revealed that people often do the easy thing.
It found that 16 percent took a first name as a password, often their own or one of their children. Another 14 percent relied on the easiest keyboard combination to remember their passwords, such as “1234″ or “12345678.” For those using English keyboards, “QWERTY”, was popular. Likewise, “AZERTY” scored with people with European keyboards.
Five percent of the stolen passwords were names of television shows or stars popular with young people like “hannah,” inspired by singer Hannah Montana. “Pokemon,” “Matrix,” and “Ironman” were others.
The word “password” or easy to guess variations like “password1″ accounted for four percent.
Three percent of the passwords expressed attitudes like “I don’t care,” “Whatever,” “Yes” or “No.”
There were sentimental choices — “Iloveyou” — and their opposite — “Ihateyou.”
Robert Graham, of the company Errata Security, which did the analysis and published the conclusions, advises that to better protect against cyber intrusions: “choose a password that is longer than eight characters with one capital letter and one symbol.”
This is a nice study. But also predictable. Many people usually choose easy passwords because complicated ones are usually harder to remember.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely predictable results, but at least it is a reminder to those who are still using simple passwords on their accounts. I wonder how much they spent to do this study?
ReplyDeleteI remember a similar report like this from the later nineties. If I remember correctly, many of the same problems existed. I wonder why we do not learn. My only problem is too many passwords. I never wanted to use keysafe and I never stored them in my browser. It does help improve the memory though ;)
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