NCSC Reveals List of World's Most Hacked Passwords

Passwords have become one of the most important aspects of human life. Either it’s your social networking or internet banking account, it’s very important to keep it secured with a strong password. But I don’t think people are taking this seriously. They are still using common passwords and underestimating the risk of hacking.

According to the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) global breach analysis report, 23.2 million people whose passwords have been hacked used ‘123456’ as their password. Similarly, ‘qwerty’ and ‘password’ still appears on the list.

The analysis has covered the 100,000 re-occurring passwords accessed by hackers worldwide. The data is taken from Have I Been Pwned, a security website run by highly-esteemed security professional Troy Hunt.

After going to through the reports, it seems there are millions of people who are making zero effort with passwords. I don’t know it’s their laziness or what but people are even using ‘1111111’, own names, football teams, musicians, fictional characters (Batman), etc as their passwords.

Top 20 Most Hacked Passwords

Well, it’s not possible to share the complete list of world’s most hacked passwords here. But let’s have a look at Top 20 most used passwords:

123456 (23.2m)
123456789 (7.7m)
qwerty (3.8m)
password (3.6m)
1111111 (3.1m)
12345678 (2.9m)
abc123 (2.8m)
1234567 (2.5m)
password1 (2.4m)
12345 (2.3m)
1234567890 (2.2m)
123123 (2.2 m)
000000 (1.9m)
Iloveyou (1.6m)
1234 (1.3m)
1q2w3e4r5t (1.2m)
Qwertyuiop (1.1m)
123 (1.02m)
Monkey (980, 209)
Dragon (968,625)

The number of online attacks has increased too much, and the list of the worst passwords is still the same. It means people are not paying attention to their security. Remember the Collection #1 breach, for example, in which billion email addresses and passwords have been posted on a hacking forum for everyone. Also, there were many breaches that happened last year like Marriott, British Airways and Facebook.

You could complain that some organisations are not taking people’s data security seriously. But one thing you can definitely do to secure your accounts by following the best practices while choosing your passwords.

Also, Read: Password Secrets : Why Your Password is Never Secure

How to Keep Your Online Presence Safe?

Needless to say, if you found any of your passwords on the list, change that right now. You can also start following some simple guidelines like choosing long password mix of capital letters, small letters, numbers and symbols.

The report also revealed that less than half of people surveyed by the NCSC says they do not always use a strong, separate password for their main email account. If you are thinking that remembering too many passwords is tough, believe me, you don’t have to. You can use wonderful applications like LastPass or Dashlane to keep your passwords safe.

“Password managers, whether an app, built into your browser or your device, can help with the burden of remembering lots of different passwords. Just remember to make your master password strong, along the lines of our guidance,” said NCSC technical director, Dr Ian Levy.