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Most Common Password List Shows Shocking Lack Of Imagination Of Computer Users

Can You Guess What The Most Common Password Is?
Huffington Post UK
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In a shocking indictment of the imaginativeness of computer users and humanity in general it turns out the most common password is - 'password'.

The second most common? 123456.

Come on people we can do better than this. Only it seems we can't.

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Must do better

A list compiled by Mark Burnett examined six million unique username/password combos in the public domain and whittled them down to the most common 10,000.

An astonishing 91% of all passwords appear in the top 1000.

Here's the top 20 along with how many times they appear.

  1. password, 32027

  2. 123456, 25969

  3. 12345678, 8667

  4. 1234, 5786

  5. qwerty, 5455

  6. 12345, 4523

  7. dragon, 4321

  8. pussy, 3945

  9. baseball, 3739

  10. football, 3682

  11. letmein, 3536

  12. monkey, 3487

  13. 696969, 3345

  14. abc123, 3310

  15. mustang, 3289

  16. michael, 3249

  17. shadow, 3209

  18. master, 3182

  19. jennifer, 2581

  20. 111111, 2570

Click here for a list of the top 100.

Here it is in handy word cloud form.

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But that is a big 'password'.

Names, sports and expletives all feature highly. Not exactly difficult to work out for someone who knows you at all.

So, if you're reading this and any of them look familiar CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD NOW.

But not to 'password', obviously.

Seven More Secure Alternatives To Passwords
Tattoos(01 of07)
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At All Things Digital's D11 conference in May, Motorola's Regina Dugan introduced several possible password alternatives -- one wearable.Dugan displayed a temporary tattoo containing "antennas and sensors" that would transmit a unique signal that could then be picked up as part of a passcode on a digital device. Like any temporary tattoo, it could be peeled off at any time and would last only up to a week. (credit:Flickr:emily.laurel504)
Pills(02 of07)
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Dugan also introduced "password pills," small vitamin-like pills that users could eat at breakfast. The pills' contents -- activated by stomach acid -- would send out an "18-bit, ECG-like signal," similar to the kind used in an echocardiogram. The signal would work as secure authentication on digital devices, and last about 24 hours -- until the pill was passed out of the body. (credit:AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
RFID(03 of07)
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Technologist Amal Graafstra has been injecting radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips into people's bodies since summer of last year. When hit by a radio signal, the chip emits a signal of its own: Forbes describes it as "a unique identifier number that functions like a long, unguessable password." Hackers like Graafstra have programmed smartphones, computers and even car locks to recognize the signal given off by their implanted chips. (credit:Courtesy of Amal Graafstra)
Gestures(04 of07)
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The technology now used in Microsoft and Android's picture passwords may be our best hope for replacing alphanumeric codes: after all, unlike tattoos, chips and pills, they're already on the market. But experts question the security of such gesture-based authentication; though taps and swipes may be harder to guess than strings of numbers and letters, telltale smudges and even covert video recordings could allow hackers to break in. (credit:Flickr:mattcornock)
Faces(05 of07)
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Companies including Diebold and Finnish startup Uniqul have started experimenting with facial recognition as authentication. The good news? You're unlikely to forget your face. The bad news? Currently many facial recognition systems can be fooled by photographs. (credit:Uniqul/YouTube)
Heartbeats(06 of07)
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Every person's heartbeat is unique -- so unique that no pattern of beats ever repeats twice. This may make heartbeats perfect passwords; Taiwanese scientists have recently devised a heartbeat-utilizing encryption scheme based on the mathematics of chaos theory. Currently the Taiwanese system is still a prototype, but researcher Chun-Liang Lin hopes to eventually "build the system into external hard drives and other devices that can be decrypted and encrypted simply by touching them." (credit:Flickr:a.drian)
Eye Movements(07 of07)
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Like heartbeats, eye movements are unique, hard to forge, and possibly excellent passwords. Researchers at Texas State University - San Marco are currently studying ways to turn eye movement into authentication. (credit:Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
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