A whopping 94% of leaked passwords are not unique – will you people ever learn?
Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETDo you ever use “123456,” “admin,” or “password” as the password for a personal or work account? If so, you’re unfortunately not alone and are placing yourself and your employer at risk. Also: 10 passkey survival tips: Prepare for your passwordless future nowPublished last Friday by security news and research outlet Cybernews, a new study of more than 19 billion leaked passwords shows that people still rely on patterns that leave them vulnerable to attack and compromise. For the study, Cybernews looked at credentials leaked from 200 different incidents over the past 12 months. Using various cyber intelligence tools, the outlet was able to determine such factors as password length, character composition, and the use of special characters and numbers.The most common (and lazy) passwords still in useBased on the analysis, lazy passwords such as “1234,” “123456,” “password,” and “admin” are still quite common. Cybernews found “1234” in almost 4% of passwords, more than 727 million. With two extra digits, “123456” appeared in 338 million passwords. Both “password” and “123456” have been among the most popular passwords since at least 2011. Also: Why multi-factor authentication is absolutely essential in 2025 More