According to statistics, 80% of data breaches are due to poor password security.
Are you trying to test users' password strength on a system? Depending on how many users there are, you might have your work cut out for you. Not because users' passwords are so tough, but rather because they are overwhelmingly weak.
Although 90% of users are concerned about their password security, almost a quarter of Americans use passwords like "qwerty" and "123456."
These are two of the most used passwords. However, they aren't only the weak passwords people use left and right.
Curious to find out some more of the world's favorite passwords? Continue reading.
Keyboard Pattern Passwords
Nowadays, it's estimated that people have over 100 passwords. Perhaps because of this, many opt to use the same password for everything, and a lot of people choose incredibly unsafe passwords to do this with.
Keyboard pattern passwords are one of the big categories of most used passwords. These include "qwerty" (one of the most used passwords of all time), as well as "qwerty123", "qwe123", and qwertyuiop, which is basically the entire top row of letters on a keyboard.
Besides these linear patterns, vertical patterns are also common, such as 1qaz2wsx. Another popular type of keyboard pattern password are ones that alternate letters and numbers going across the keyboard from left to right.
Two options a lot of people use are 1q2w3e4r5t and 1q2w3e.
Numeric Passwords
Just about anyone with a grain of tech knowledge will tell you that the first step in how to create a good password is to include numbers. Including letters or special characters is also one of the most common password requirements from systems.
Unfortunately, a lot of people use only numbers for their passwords. To make matters even worse, they use them in sequence.
Now you might be thinking, surely most people would not make this mistake? Well, you're wrong.
Of all the most common passwords, "123456" is the #1 most used, with over 176 million uses.
Other variations include:
- 12345
- 1234567
- 12345678
- 123456789
- 1234567890
- 123123
- 123321
- 111111
- 000000
- 666666
- 654321
As you can imagine these are some of the worst passwords imaginable, as even a child could probably crack them.
Word Passwords
One-word passwords, that contain no numbers or special characters are also notorious for being some of the worst passwords to choose.
However, millions of people use them.
The very worst password of this type, of all time, is probably "password." Unfortunately, "password" ranks in the #4 position for the most used password in the world. Yikes.
It seems like there are some people who decide to up security a little by adding a 1 and making it "password1". These people do seem to be more in the minority, however, as "password1" is only the world's 17th most popular password.
Another dangerous and common option is "DEFAULT," frighteningly.
For some reason, the other most used passwords that are just words are not nearly as obvious as "password" or "DEFAULT. Favorite options include "monkey," "dragon," and "iloveyou."
Conclusion? It's dragons, monkeys, and love that make the world go round folks.
If you want a comprehensive list of the most used number passwords, I'd recommend you check out my list of the top 30 most commonly used passwords of all time.
To compile this list I processed 73,889 leaked databases and collected roughly 24 billion passwords. In other words, you can bet your qwerty this is the most legitimate top 30 passwords list currently in existence.
Need a Massive List of Most Used Passwords?
Reading about the most used passwords of all time is interesting, but it won't help you much if you need to do extensive testing for weak passwords in a system.
Dictionary Assasin is a collection of password master lists. There are lots of password lists on the internet, but not all are the same size and many contain duplicates.
By merging as many lists as I could find, I created a master list for my own personal use, which is now available to purchase.
If this is something you need, head over to my shop page.