Millions of people using this easy-to-guess password - Know these interesting facts
Millions of people are using easy-to-guess passwords on sensitive accounts, with 123456 being the most widely-used on breached accounts, suggests a security study.
Millions of people are using easy-to-guess passwords on sensitive accounts, with "123456" being the most widely-used on breached accounts, suggests a security study. The study by the UK`s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) helped to uncover the gaps in cyber-knowledge that could leave people in danger of being exploited, the BBC reported on Sunday.
For its first cyber-survey, the NCSC analysed public databases of breached accounts to see which words, phrases and strings people used. Top of the list was "123456", appearing in more than 23 million passwords. The second-most popular string, "123456789", was not much harder to crack, while others in the top five included "qwerty", "password" and "1111111".
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Security expert Troy Hunt, who maintains a database of hacked account data, said picking a good password was the "single biggest control" people had over their online security. "We typically haven`t done a very good job of that either as individuals or as the organisations asking us to register with them."
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