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Sunday, March 21, 2010

10 most dangerous passwords

10 most 
dangerous passwordsBy their very purpose passwords are aimed to keep us safe. But, there are passwords that are hacker’s dream. So, for passwords to save us, we need to have safe passwords.
Internet security firm Imperva recently unveiled a list of most commonly used passwords on the Web, which it say are also the most `unsafe’ passwords. The list is based on Imperva’s analysis of 32 million passwords.
Read on to find out the 10 most easily hacked passwords.


123456, 12345
123456, 
12345The study reveals that ‘123456′ is the most commonly used password. Imperva found that nearly 1% of the 32 million people it studied were using “123456″ as a password. The second most vulnerable password is 12345.
Amichai Shulman, of internet security firm Imperva, said, “With only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second — or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes. “Everyone needs to understand what poor passwords mean in today’s world of automated cyber attacks.
123456789, password
123456789, 
passwordThe next most dangerous password according to the study is again combination of digits — 123456789.
Security experts at Imperva suggest taking a sentence and transforming it into a non-existent word. For instance “This little piggy went to market” might become “tlpWENT2m”.
The fourth most vulnerable password is the word ‘Password’ itself.
iloveyou, princess
iloveyou, 
princessAt No 5 on the list of easily hacked password is ‘iloveyou’. This is followed by ‘princess’ at No 6.
According to the study, nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). Researchers advice mix upper and lower-case letters, numbers and even symbols such as %,* or $.
rockyou, 1234567
rockyou, 
1234567‘Rockyou’ is at No 7 on the list of easily hackable passwords. The study reveals that almost 60% of users chose their passwords from within a limited set of characters. About 40% of the users use only lowercase characters for their passwords and about another 16% use only digits. Less than 4% of the users use special characters.
Rockyou is followed by 1234567 at No 8.
12345678, abc123
12345678, 
abc123Next on the list is 12345678 followed by abc123 at No 10.
Researchers at security firm Imperva advice to use a different password for all sites. Also, the password should contain at least eight characters. The report reveals that just one half of the passwords contained seven or less characters. A staggering 30% of users chose passwords whose length was equal to or below six characters.

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