Password “123456” was the least secure of 2019
An investigation carried out by the cybersecurity company Splashdata ranked it the top of the worst keys this year
The passwords ‘123456’ and ‘123456789’ have been the most frequent filtered by cybercriminals in the last year, and only the first one – the most common – was ever used by 3% of Internet users, according to the Ranking of the Worst Passwords of 2019 made by the cybersecurity company Splashdata.
The simple sequences of numbers and letters continue to be the most used passwords in online services, despite the fact that being so predictable compromises the security of Internet users.
Splashdata published its ninth annual list of the worst passwords of the year, where they analyze more than 5 million passwords that have been leaked on the Internet during this year 2019.
The company estimates that almost 10% of people used some of the worst 25 keys, and that 3% of the total has used the chosen one as the worst password of the year: ‘1234546’, which repeats with respect to the 2018 list.
For the first time since this list was made, the keyword ‘password’ has fallen from the top 2 to position number 4. It is also worth noting the entry of new passwords such as ‘qwertyuiop‘, numerical sequences such as 7777777 or simple words such as ‘dragon’.
The problem of this type of passwords is that although they seem complicated, they are keys used from one side of the keyboard to the other, making it quite easy for hackers to get the password.
The five most used passwords in 2019 were: ‘123456’, ‘123456789’, ‘qwerty’, ‘password’ and ‘1234567’. Among other keys that appear in this top 25 are ‘welcome’, ‘admin’ or ‘abc123’. The company claims that most passwords belonged to users in North America and Europe.
K. Tovar
Source: dpa
