It is 2020 and among all the other things going on during this dumpster-fire of a year – passwords are still a problem. According to a list of the 200 worst passwords of 2020 from NordPass, millions of people are still using “123456” and “password” as part of their login credentials. These passwords are the worst you can use year in and year out they have been the worst since I started tracking them on the Bach Seat in 2011.“123456,” has been breached more than 23 million times alone, according to NordPass. To protect your data – stop using “123456″ and “password.”
Half of the top 25 passwords are new offenders for 2020. But NordPass says any of the top 25 bad passwords typically take less than a second to crack. Don’t be fooled – using some variation of the number bar, such as “000000″ or “123123” does not add extra security to your account. Similarly, any adjacent-key letter combo you are using such as “qwertyuiop” or “asdfghjkl,” can be easily cracked in less than a second’s time, the company said.
2020's Worst Passwords
| 2020 Rank | Password | Change from 2019 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 123456 | - |
| 2 | 123456789 | - |
| 3 | picture1 | New |
| 4 | password | - |
| 5 | 12345678 | +1 |
| 6 | 111111 | +3 |
| 7 | 123123 | +3 |
| 8 | 12345 | -1 |
| 9 | 1234567890 | New |
| 10 | senha | New |
| 11 | 1234567 | -6 |
| 12 | qwerty | -9 |
| 13 | abc123 | -2 |
| 14 | Million2 | New |
| 15 | 000000 | New |
| 16 | 1234 | New |
| 17 | iloveyou | -9 |
| 18 | aaron431 | New |
| 19 | password1 | New |
| 20 | qqww1122 | New |
| 21 | 123 | New |
| 22 | omgpop | New |
| 23 | 123321 | New |
| 24 | 654321 | New |
| 25 | qwertyuiop | -10 |
Methodology: The list of passwords was compiled by Nordpass, which sells a password manager, in partnership with a third-party company specializing in data breach research. They evaluated a database that contained 275,699,516 passwords in total.
Related article
- A computer can guess more than 100,000,000,000 passwords per second. Still, think yours is secure? (GCN.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.