NCSC Announces Their List With Most Hacked Passwords

• A new list with the top 100k most used weak passwords is out, and the top one is the one you’d expect.
• NCSC’s survey shows that people agree on the importance of cyber-security, but remain vulnerable.
• A hefty 37% is pessimistic about the difference that protection measures make at the end of the day.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the UK has announced their refreshed list with the most hacked passwords, following a relevant survey that they conducted between November 2018 and January 2019. Although recurring, the major finding of the report is the fact that the most used hacked password remains “123456”, which has enabled hackers to victimize 23.2 million accounts so far. This password has topped the SplashData list back in December, and the same report again in 2017, so it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. Still, one has to wonder how so many people out there continue to take their account security so lightly with the calendar showing 2019.

Here are the top 15 of the most breached account passwords according to the NCSC:

• 123456 – 23.2 million
• 123456789 – 7.7 million
• qwerty – 3.8 million
• password – 3.6 million
• 111111 – 3.1 million
• 12345678
• abc123
• 1234567
• password1
• 12345
• 1234567890
• 123123
• 000000
• iloveyou
• 1234

Of course, there are a lot more, and NCSC publishes the top 100000 of them in order to warn you through “Have I Been Pwned” to change it, or enable web app developers to blacklist them and prevent you from using one to set up a new account. Of course, this practice gives hackers a valuable starting point, but NCSC says hackers already have this in their hands so they are trying to raise awareness where it matters.

The most common name-passwords that were breached are the following:

• ashley – 432k
• michael – 425k
• daniel – 368k
• jessica – 324k
• charlie – 308k

Football teams were not absent from this list, as this is the UK we’re talking about, so liverpool topped with 280k, followed by chelsea, arsenal, manutd, and Everton for the top five. Bands like blink182, metallica, slipknot, 50cent, and eminem also counted hundreds of thousands of breached account incidents.

From the NCSC survey

The survey data shows that out of the 1350 people asked, only 15% knows how to protect themselves online, although 80% consider cyber-security to be a “high priority”. The percentage of those who are actually using a password manager to store their passphrases is 21%, so approximately one out of five. That’s about the same as the 20% who are not even using a password or PIN to unlock their devices. Finally, 37% of the survey participants believe that whatever they’ll do, losing money or personal details over the internet is absolutely unavoidable nowadays.

From the NCSC survey

If you don’t know how to protect yourself online and looking for cyber-security information that won’t confuse you, you are in the right place already. Check out our guide on how to create a strong password, and also our list with the best password managers that you should consider using right now.

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