It looks like that many of us spent 2023 using the weakest passwords possible for our online accounts, putting us all at risk of being hacked in the blink of an eye.
New research from password manager NordPass discovered the top 200 most common passwords in the world for this year - 70% of which are so poor that they can be cracked in under a second.
The study also looked into what passwords are used for certain accounts, finding that those securing a users' financial accounts are the strongest, whereas those used for streaming service accounts are the weakest.
Lessons not learned
The list was compiled from a 4.3TB database populated from various publicly available sources, such as passwords that have been leaked on the dark web. The most common password globally was '123456', followed by 'admin'. Almost a third of all passwords in the list used some kind of numerical sequence.
For four years out of the previous five, '123456' has taken the number one spot. It is also the popular used in the US this year, which marks a change from last year, where the nation's favorite was 'guest', an equally weak password.
Users around the world also created passwords that reference certain brands or companies relevant to the type of account they are securing. For instance, passwords such as 'iPhone6s' and 'Samsung1' were commonly used for smartphone apps.
'admin' also made it near the top in each of the 30 countries looked at this year, suggesting that people aren't bothering to change default passwords as they should.
NordPass notes that with the increasing threat of infostealing malware, using strong passwords and protecting them properly is more important than ever. CTO Tomas Smalakys commented that, "alternative methods in online authentication are now essential."
He added that passkeys, the new passwordless technology, are the future to securing online accounts, as they are "considered the most promising innovation to replace passwords... gaining trust among individuals and progressive companies worldwide."
"Being among the first password managers to offer this technology, we see people are curious to test new things, as long as this helps eliminate the hassle of passwords.”
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- Attention businesses: please stop using the worst passwords possible
