No matter how we have been warned, we continue to use weak passwords on the Internet, which leads to regular hacking of certain accounts. This article is about the most hacked passwords in the world.
Which passwords are not reliable?
Passwords rule the electronic world. Perhaps there is no such branch in any of the areas of user activity related to personal electronic devices that would not require the use of passwords and other means of protecting personal data.
As each of us uses social networks, e-mail, messengers, and various online services, it is important to know how to securely protect our data. And for owners of websites, online stores, blogs, secure access to accounts is an integral part of a successful business.
One of the most common ways to hack a computer or social network account is password guessing. IT security experts annually warn users to protect their data, but the top 10 vulnerable combinations are still predictable. First of all, unpopular sites are hacked without serious protection. Hackers put hacked accounts in free access to enter all combinations of login + password into dictionaries, using them in social networks, payment systems, or postal services.
Analysts at password management company NordPass have presented a ranking of the 200 most popular passwords on the web in 2020.
The list of 20 Most Hacked Passwords includes the following options:
- 123456
- 123456789
- qwerty123
- password1
- 12345678
- iloveyou
- 1234
- Monkey
- abc123
- 123123
- 111111
- Dragon
- Bigbasket
- 000000
- 121212
- hello123
- azerty
- welcome123
- kapil*12345
- onepice
How to create a secure password?
The days when the user was allowed to come up with any password during registration are over. Now it is required from him that the code contains at least one capital letter, one number, and one special character. This is annoying for many, but thanks to this approach, it is possible to save user accounts.
The fact is that the presence of different characters in one password increases its entropy – a fraction of chaos that makes the process of password guessing more difficult. And the length of the password slows down the selection of characters: it is easier for a computer to figure out a five-digit cipher than a ten-digit one. You can use Latin and Cyrillic in the same password, different but similar characters like 0 and O, alternating hyphens and dashes. Or you can create it in another language, for example, a password in Spanish. The main thing is that your password is not shorter than ten characters.
Basic rules to create a reliable password include:
- Do not use the same bundle on different sites.
- Try not to use the same combinations on different sites.
- The most complex and strong combinations should be used for the most important sites – payment systems, mail accounts, with which you can reset passwords to payment systems, etc.
- Conversions will also help to create a strong password: Halloween – h @ llowe @ n – h @ LloWE @ n – h @ Llo5W92E @ n.
- Do not use information that others may know or easily learn, as well as private information, to create passwords. For example, nickname, your name or surname, names of relatives, days or years of birth, name of the street where you live, numbers from the address, phone number, etc.
- Use special applications for generating passwords like 1Password, LastPass, etc. These are special services that independently generate and store complex passwords. Some of them are installed in the browser, others in the computer memory.