A Lesson In Simple Passwords
by Don Fosen on Jan.21, 2010, under Security Updates
A company recently did an analysis of 32 millions passwords that were published on the Internet from a breach at RockYou.com. This was a very rare opportunity to look at the passwords people select using a large set of data. The results? 20% of the 32 million password created were from a very small pool of 5000 words. This is problematic because hackers frequently use tools that conduct multiple logins using a dictionary of common words. This software can run through thousands of passwords a minute and find accounts it can access. The hackers then exploit these accounts or sell them to other criminals.
Your best bet? Use passwords that contain mixed case, letters and numbers, and throw in a special character now and then. Don’t use your birthday or your family names, including your pets. And whatever you do, don’t use “123456″ – the most common of the common passwords.
Additional Information:
Simple Passwords Remain Popular
Analysis of 32 million passwords
