Most Common Passwords

http://blog.jimmyr.com/Most_Common_Passwords_20_2008.php

by superberliner • 17 years ago

47 53 17 years ago

blog.jimmyr.com

pavel_lishin6• 17 years ago

"Mixed numbers and letters over 8 characters long. Memorize it once, use it forever."

Wait, is this sarcasm?

joshfinnie• 17 years ago

I am not sure it is. If you have a strong enough password of 8+ characters of mixed numbers, letters and symbols, why not sure if forever? I understand that using the same password for every website is not the best practice, but his suggestion quoted above is a great alternative for people that are using their first name and birthday for passwords.

axod• 17 years ago

>> " I understand that using the same password for every website is not the best practice"

It's ridiculously bad practice. Using lots of weak different passwords is probably better than using one strong password for everything.

maukdaddy• 17 years ago

Until one crappy website gets hacked and your "perfect" password is out there. NEVER use the same password for every site.

pmichaud2• 17 years ago

I have different levels of passwords:

1) Doesn't matter, it's fairly weak and I use it for spammy stuff.

2) It matters, I use it for accounts I care about, but nothing that would ruin my life. It's strong, but it's used in a couple places.

3) Banks, etc -- these all get can't-crack-it-in-1000-years passwords that are all different.

I have them written down long hand, but I think the chance of an arbitrary burglar making it through my dog, alarm system, up stairs to my office, then ignoring my 5 monitors and 3 nice computers in favor of a nondescript stack of papers on a book shelf, then getting away with said papers, and using them to break into my bank accounts seems kind of far fetched. Call me crazy.

rimantas• 17 years ago

My favourite password: passphrase. Something like "some easy to remember phrase. With some punctuation and 1 or 2 numbers!" Either this, or derivative: "setrp.Wspa1||2n!".

quant18• 17 years ago

In my previous job they usually advised us to use an acronym/initialism derived from some phrase which would be memorable to us. I dunno how secure it was. For one thing I'd bet 90% of the people had the substring "wtf" in there somewhere. Or "Ihmfj" (I hate my f*ing job). Plus a few numbers.

pavel_lishin6• 17 years ago

I'm betting [bossname]sucks was a popular one.

profquail• 17 years ago

I thought they were "Love", "Sex", "Secret", and "God"?

endlessvoid942• 17 years ago

I'm having a hackers party this friday night. i might have to post this all over my apt as decoration.

also, i have a payphone and jolt cola. god, i can't wait.

unalone• 17 years ago

Wow, a hacker's party? How does that work? What do you do? I'm fascinated.

lionhearted• 17 years ago

Quick aside:

> 6. 123456, 123, 123123, 01234 and other retarded combinations

I dated a girl whose brother came down with a high fever when he was young, and he became mentally retarded and stayed on the development level of a young boy his whole life before dying in his early 20's. I'd always colloquially used "retard" and "retarded" the way I used "fag" and "homo" in high school - y'know, it was what the other kids did. Things "sucked", and teachers were "retarded", and things like that.

Anyway, one time I asked her how to translate "retarded" into her language, and she kind of froze and said, "I don't know." I'd never seen her unhappy quite like that, and only realized why later. That made me think - was it cutting her to the bone every time I casually dropped a "The airport baggage people must be retarded" or some such?

There's got to be a million synonyms for really stupid people doing really stupid things, so it wasn't too hard to cut down my use of the word. I still get it wrong sometimes, but maybe worth five seconds of thinking about.

felideon2• 17 years ago

I dated a girl whose brother came down with a high fever when he was young, and he became mentally retarded

Off-topic here, but I'm curious for my own family.

From what I've read on fever phobia, it seems like what most people consider a high fever really is normal and no reason to panic like we're used to doing[1]. In this girl's brother's case, I wonder how high that fever really was (and how old he was) in order for it to have affected him like that.

[1] Or have nurses on the 24/7 pediatrician line yell at you to rush to the nearest ER, only to get charged $400+ for Tylenol.

berntb2• 17 years ago

Don't worry, there are lots of ways things can screw up -- so what gets you will probably be something completely different.

What got me was a simple infection in a tooth. It didn't hurt, so I didn't realize that it was bad. Besides, I was incredibly tired from being "burnt out" which was destroying my life... Let me just say that I'll never see non-functional people in a workplace in the same way. Shudder.

(Yes, totally off-topic. :-)

pavel_lishin6• 17 years ago

I'll be the dad that will shell out $400 for Tylenol to avoid the risk of my child becoming retarded.

Not to mention, $400 for peace of mind is pretty cheap, and would probably buy me a decade or two of ulcer-free living.

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

I know a fever of ~40.5 or 105 when taken orally is a medical emergency, you shouldn't even waste time calling anyone before sticking your kid in a car hugging every icepack you've got, because the problem won't be brain damage it'll be death. A fever over 41/106 when taken anally is hyperthermia and can lead to the rapid breakdown of cells (likely the girl's brother got brain damage either through braincell death if he had a severe fever, or his fever was associated with swelling of the brain, which usually shows with uncommonly intense headaches/migraines).

From what I remember, if your kids fever ever gets over 39/100.4 (obviously if they're a baby or infant you should call your own doctor for any fever and follow their orders) you should call your family doctor, keep them cool (cold clothes and such, nothing severe) to keep them cool and do what the doctor says. Over 40/104 (and this is what my mum did to me, she's a nurse) she kept a cold bath and had me sit in it for 5 minutes or so, before laying down in bed with cold clothes and IIRC sometimes even ice packs to keep the fever dipping under the 40's. Over night my fever broke and stayed below 40 and my family doctor said I'd be fine. She even said, the only reason she kept me out of hospital was because doctors treat a fever with everything but cold until it's a last resort. I wasn't a particularly happy kid having been dunked in a cold bath all night, but I'd certainly have been more uncomfortable for a lot longer in hospital, but I had a nurse with over 20 years of experience (a considerable amount more experience than the junior doctors they leave on staff at 3am).

Personally I believe, a paediatrician shouldn't have got into the job if he didn't expect panicked phone calls all hours of the night. So anyone with a half-decent paediatrician and concerns, I'd say call away. The bastards get paid way too much and if they don't want to deal with their patients complaining they should have become a mortician.

gruseom4• 17 years ago

Meh. I applaud you for being considerate to your girlfriend, but it's no reason to try to change the English language.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

There is, however, reason to use the many synonyms in English in ways that are considerate to innocent people with severe problems.

baddox2• 17 years ago

I've heard this sentiment before. Can anyone explain to me exactly why the use of the word "retarded" is offensive? I mean literally explain it to me, assuming that I'm someone who doesn't find it "obviously offensive."

nvoorhies• 17 years ago

It's become a blunt, rather crude term for the description of someone whose cognitive abilities are substandard, and thus can feel rather impolitic to use it around people directly or indirectly so afflicted.

Kinda like if might be awkward if you referred to software that wasn't fully functional as "crippleware" in front of a friend that had polio.

gort• 17 years ago

"There's got to be a million synonyms for really stupid people doing really stupid things"

It's curious though that some similar words are acceptable. Nobody complains about "lame" or "dumb", even though there are people with those precise medical conditions. Nor does describing something as "brain dead" seem to arouse this reaction. And it's fine to call something "crazy" or "mad", or say that an organisation is "schizophrenic", etc etc.

known• 17 years ago

A Google search for

    allinurl:passwd.txt site:.com

gives 320 results.

passssss• 17 years ago

allinurl:passwd.txt slicehost.com

fondue• 17 years ago

123456? That's amazing, I've got the same combination on my luggage!

dkokelley• 17 years ago

+1 for the Spaceballs reference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceballs

nixy• 17 years ago

"password" is one of the most common passwords -- not on the list though.

gtani• 17 years ago

http://www.eribium.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/common_pas...

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/05/confess-...

http://geodsoft.com/howto/password/common.htm

fnid2• 17 years ago

This is why storing plain text passwords is evil.

yan• 17 years ago

Reposting from other passwords thread as I feel it's relevant here also:

Why do people insist on having short (<12 chars) overly complicated passwords? The passphrase: "totallysecretpasswordthatyoullneverguess" (or other similarly-long phrase) serves as a much more secure pass-phrase than the hodgepodge of non-alphanumeric characters people suggest that good passwords are and is far easier to remember. The only impediment to decent passphrases are services that limit how many characters your password can be.

reduxredacted• 17 years ago

It was worth the repost.

I don't understand sites that have serious length limitations on passwords. I recall Amex had an 8 character limit last year when I had an account with them.

Passphrases + randomly generated passwords via KeePass or Password Safe is the way I go.

AndrewDucker• 17 years ago

For a long time I used affirmations as passwords. My machine (at that job) autolocked after a few minutes, so I'd be typing the same thing in dozens of times a day - I figured it might as well be something useful.

It's amazing the effect that typing GetANewJob repeatedly had...

(Yes, I got one)

agegelabs• 17 years ago

Great article!

"Because of retarted script kiddy teenagers and nigerians that fancy themselves hackers using prebuilt trojan software"

- It was not necessary to single out Nigerians and I'm not sure what it added to your great piece on common passwords.

blang• 17 years ago

no 'test'? it can be typed all with your left hand, while keeping your right on the mouse.

darose• 17 years ago

"My opinion on an Ideal password ... Memorize it once, use it forever."

Just about the worst password advice someone could possibly give. Hack someone's password once, and you've got access to all their accounts everywhere.

socillion• 17 years ago

Everyone thinks of their password when the "How can I prevent being hacked?" comes up. What everyone forgets is password recovery. 'Hacking' as done by Anonymous and other people today usually involves resetting the email password. It's amazingly easy to find answers to questions such as "Where was my honeymoon?" or "What's my mother's maiden name?". Once the email account at yahoo, gmail, hotmail or elsewhere - all of which have a process to reset passwords - are cracked, all the other accounts linked to the email can be taken over. Remember Palin? Because of the above, I always set the recovery to a ~32 alphanumeric string, and the question to an insulting statement.

lurkinggrue• 17 years ago

Moore's Law and Password Cracking: http://www.flickr.com/photos/changa_lion/3383711753/

Most Common Passwords

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