A recent phishing attack on MySpace revealed thousands of passwords in public. As the number of passwords revealed were quite large, it provided a thrust for analysing the present trend in passwords. While the most of the MySpace passwords were alphanumeric and did not contain dictionary words, there were some quite common. The point forgotten while keeping these passwords were that these passwords could be familier to anyone, not just you. Below are the few points of the analysis, check whether your's is well protected.
» Top 20 Common Passwords (in order) : password1, abc123, myspace1, password, blink182, qwerty1, fuckyou, 123abc, baseball1, football1, 123456, soccer, monkey1, liverpool1, princess1, jordan23, slipknot1, superman1, iloveyou1 and monkey.
» As expected, English vowels are by far the most frequent occurring password symbols (E, 48 percent; A, 46 percent; I, 34 percent; O, 33 percent). Other high-ranking letters included R (35 percent), S (32 percent), N (31 percent), L (28 percent), T (25 percent), C (21 percent), and M (21 percent).
» Numbers were used in well over half the passwords. The number 1 appeared 45 percent of the time, followed by the numbers 2 (22 percent), 0 (16 percent), and 3 (15 percent). Numbers 4 through 9 appeared roughly 9 to 11 percent of the time.
» When number 1 was used, it appeared 78 percent at the end.
» Cuss or profane words were very popular.
» Words, colors, years, names, sports, hobbies, and music groups were very popular. FYI, your girlfriend or boyfriend’s name isn’t that uncommon in most cases. I, too, luv Brandi, Bob, or Joe.
(Courtesy: infoworld, schneier)
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