Do you worry about your password being easy to crack? If you think that is just an unnecessary feeling of paranoia, you are wrong. In this modern era, cracking an account protected by a feebly password like “abc123” is an effortless job for most of the sophisticated hackers. Specialists from SplashData have implemented a study, regarding the password-selection in 2017.
People are still reckless with their passwords
However, a statement that people are still not paying enough attention to the security of their accounts has been true for a very long time. Even though we are discussing the worst passwords from 2017, the same combinations have been around for decades, meaning that the huge security gap is not getting smaller, but bigger.
Thanks to numerous data breaches, it is rather easy for hackers to find lists of mostly selected passwords. While they might not be applicable to all accounts, there is a disturbing percentage of people that still “secure” their data with ludicrous combinations like “iloveyou”, “admin”, “letmein” or etc. A very common mistake is to use your name in the password. In most cases, names are publicly displayed for anyone to see.
Therefore, hackers do not have to be brain surgeons to try passwords like “name123” or “nameabc123”. While users might think that these passwords will be easy to remember and they will not have to suffer from having to recover their accounts, this is a frequently-occurring mistake. Convenience should not win against privacy and security. In order to guarantee confidentially on the Web, you must find a way to remember a complicated combination.
If you think that hackers can only guess your password, this is also an incorrect assumption. In order to gain access into accounts, crooks use password-cracking-databases that contain thousands of popular combinations. Therefore, if you are using a password which is common, you fall in to a group which can potentially become a victim of hackers’ attacks.
Ways to create a complicated password
There are a few recommendations that we hope online surfers will come to follow.
1. Look through the leaked databases of mostly-selected passwords. Did you find your password? This means that you have to change it immediately.
2. Our advice would be not to use specific worlds for passwords. It is best to create random combinations of letters and numbers which would not be easy to crack. However, while a password “qwerty” might look random from the first glance, it is one of the worst passwords of 2017.
3. Do not reuse passwords. Never assign the same combination to more than one account. If one account is hacked into, then the crooks will have access to the other one as well. It’s like killing two birds with only one shot.
4. Use two-factor authentication. This means that even if your password is stolen or leaked, crooks will not be able to gain access to your account.
5. Select a password manager. This is a controversial subject since it is rather dangerous to give such power to one program. Therefore, if you decide to use a password manager, you have to make sure that it is legitimate. A reliable tool will not only save your combinations, but give suggestions on what the password should be. And, trust us, these programs will create very hard-to-crack codes.
Source: troyhunt.com.
