Sometimes, it takes lots of money, time, coding skill, and technological infrastructure to hack an account or get a password. But, seldom, a good guess does the magic.
Today, millions of people fall prey to hacking by exposing their passwords, and others just create passwords that are too easy to guess. That’s why we decided to compile an exhaustive list of the most hacked passwords in the world so that you can watch out.
This post not only features the data from authentic organizations’ surveys, but our team of cybersecurity experts also analyzed over 20 million passwords that we collected from various worldwide databases. We organized the results in different lists (to make it better understandable for our readers), such as country-specific, on names, sports, musicians, and students.
Before you start, please note this post is not supposed to sensitize you about how to hack other people’s passwords. Instead, it’s about encouraging you to only use stronger and unique passwords.
Note: While on top of the organizations’ surveys’ data, we gathered data from leaks found on marketplaces, dark web sites, and hacking forums, but we only analyzed the data itself. Meaning no personally identifiable information such as banking details or usernames were compromised while preparing this report.
The 20 most used passwords in the world
Ironically, the most hackable passwords also happen to be the most popular. And to crack them, a hacker does not even need to use any infrastructure or skill as long as he can make a good guess.
This list will show you that people need to do better when it comes to creating their passwords. But, it’s not in any way intended to put you to shame but rather to educate you on passwords that you may want to strengthen.
You may also realize that the more complicated your password is, the harder it is to hack it. Yes, it would help if you had a memorable password, but creating a complex one would be your top priority in this age.
You don’t want anyone to guess your password correctly. For this reason, it’s believed that using your favorite football team as your password is a lazy thing. Seriously.
Names of celebrities or anything associated with you can easily be guessed, and you don’t want to give that power to malicious people.
According to the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the worst passwords you can use are easy to crack. The report analyzed more than 23.2 million passwords, and they find some weird details. For instance, more than 100,000 hacked passwords are those that are recurring and popular among people.
In the worst passwords list, you might find it horrifying that many people even use qwerty or 123456, which is quite funny. Others use their own name or the same email username, which gives hackers an upper hand.
Here’s a list of the world’s most hackable passwords:
- 123456 (23.2 million users)
- 123456789 (7.7 million users)
- qwerty (3.8 million users)
- password (3.6 million users)
- 1111111 (3.1 million users)
- 12345678 (2.9 million users)
- abc123 (2.8 million users)
- 1234567 (2.5 million users)
- password1 (2.4 million users)
- 12345 (2.3 million users)
- 1234567890 (2.2 million users)
- 123123 (2.2 million users)
- 000000 (1.9 million users)
- Iloveyou (1.6 million users)
- 1234 (1.3 million users)
- 1q2w3e4r5t (1.2 million users)
- Qwertyuiop (1.1 million users)
- 123 (1.02 million users)
- Monkey (980, 209 users)
- Dragon (968,625 users)
Looking at the number of people using the above-listed ridiculously unimaginative internet’s most vulnerable passwords, all we can say is, “it is just lazy.”
Top 5 names used as passwords
- ashley (432,276 users)
- michael (425,291 users)
- daniel (368,227 users)
- jessica (324,125 users)
- charlie (308,939 users)
- princess
- sunshine