The results of an analytical study of the 32 million consumer password breaches exposed in the recent Rockyou.com breach was released last week by leading security software provider Imperva, providing a unique glimpse into the way that users select passwords and highlighting consumer susceptibility to cyber attack.
The most commonly used passwords identified are:
1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123
“Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today’s world of automated cyber attacks. With only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second—or 1,000 accounts every 17 minutes,” said Imperva’s CTO Amichai Shulman.
For enterprises, password insecurity can have dire consequences. “Employees using the same passwords on Facebook that they use in the workplace bring the possibility of compromising enterprise systems, especially if they are using easy to crack passwords like ‘123456’,” said Shulman.
“The problem has changed very little over the past 20 years”, he added, referring to a 1990 Unix study that showed a password selection pattern similar to those consumers select today. “It’s time for everyone to take password security seriously – it’s an important first step in data security.”
