Brits’ high two passwords are ‘admin’ and ‘123456’ – here is what you must do keep secure
Young and old are equally bad at protecting online content with ‘password’ the third most-used security phrase and the third most common is plain old ‘password’
Brits still have not got the hang of computer passwords 60 years after they were invented – with the top two being ‘admin’ and ‘123456’. The third most common is plain old ‘password’.
The first digital password was introduced to protect computer files in the US in 1961 but folk still have not worked out how to make them tough to crack.
Online security giant NordPass has just released the seventh edition of its annual Most Common Passwords research.
A spokesman said: “Although cybersecurity experts keep repeating that simple passwords are extremely easy to guess using a dictionary and brute-force attacks Brits seem to ignore the warnings.
“Words, number combinations and common keyboard patterns dominate the UK’s top 20 list.
“This year ‘admin’ is the most common password in the United Kingdom replacing last year’s top choice ‘password’. While ‘123456’ ranks second. However different variations of the word ‘password’ take up as many as five spots in the UK’s top 20.
“Different numeric combinations take up five more spots. Password quality is equally poor across all generational groups. Far from discerning differences, researchers found a striking uniformity in vulnerability. For every age bracket ‘12345’ and ‘123456’ consistently emerge as the top choices.”
Experts said older generations were ‘more likely’ to use names in their passwords.
Though younger folk – born after the creation of the internet in 1983 – seem savvy enough not to deploy monikers their choice of numbers poses an obvious security risk relying on combinations like ‘1234567890’.
“Numbers top both the global and generational lists,” the spokesman went on. Simple numeric sequences spanning from `12345’ to ‘1234567890’ along with common weak passwords like ‘qwerty123’ also dominate the top 20 lists in various countries including the United Kingdom.”
Boffins have detected a ‘significant increase in the use of special characters’. But they were often deployed in easy-to-guess words.
“This year 32 passwords on the main list include special characters, a notable rise from just six last year,’’ the spokesman said.
“Unfortunately most of them are no more complicated than ‘P@ssw0rd’, ‘Admin@123’ or ‘Abcd@1234’.
“More than half of the exposed world’s most common passwords we discovered are still made of the easiest keyboard combinations of numbers and letters such as ‘qwerty’, ‘1q2w3e4r5t’ and ‘123456789’.”
Karolis Arbaciauskas, head of product at NordPass, said: “Generally speaking despite all efforts in cybersecurity education and digital awareness over the years data reveals only minor improvements in password hygiene.
“The world is slowly moving towards passkeys – a new passwordless authentication method based on biometric data – but in the interim, until passkeys become ubiquitous, strong passwords are very important especially since around 80% of data breaches are caused by compromised, weak, and reused passwords and criminals will intensify their attacks as much as they can until they reach an obstacle they can’t overcome.”
NordPass suggests passwords should be at least 20 characters long and consist of random combinations of numbers, letters, and special characters. They should never be reused, regularly checked and linked to multi-factor authentication.
Password managers can help ‘generate, store, review, and safely manage’ combinations to ensure they are ‘well protected, difficult to crack and easily available’.
