16% of passwords matched a person's first name. This includes people choosing their own first names or those of their spouses or children. The most popular first names were Joshua, Thomas, Michael, and Charlie. But I wonder if there is something else going on. Joshua, for example, was also the password to the computer in "Wargames," which almost certainly accounts for it being at top. Variations of the name "Jordan" are popular, which almost certainly refers to "Michael Jordan," a prominent basketball start (such as "jordan23," referring to his jersey number). This makes me wonder how many people use "Michael" as a password to refer to their children compared to sports stars.
14% of passwords were patterns on the keyboard, like "1234," "qwerty," or "asdf." There are a lot of different patterns people choose, like "1qaz2wsx" or "1q2w3e." I spent a while googling "159357," trying to figure out how to categorize it, then realized it was a pattern on the numeric keypad. I suppose whereas "1234" is popular among righthanded people, "159357" will be popular among lefties.
4% are variations of the word "password," such as "passw0rd," "password1," or "passwd." I googled "drowssap," trying to figure out how to categorize it, until I realized it was "password" spelled backward.
For the complete list and analysis, visit link.
http://www.darkreading.com/blog/archives/2009/02/phpbb_password.html - via tech
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
Comments (10)
I wrote more about that, and about some tips for avoiding common password management headaches, here:
The Danger of Strong Passwords that are Easy-to-remember
http://faseidl.com/public/item/229130
How about 123456 that's the kinda combo an idiot has on his luggage.
I have to use that sometime.