Welcome to the "Age of Cyber Attacks"
Right now every organization across the globe is vulnerable to data breaches. Consider the fact that in 2016 alone, there were 64,199 security incidents spread across 82 countries.
Staggering numbers from security experts suggest that over 95 percent of all corporations have experienced a data breach of some kind – many of which can go undetected for months or years. What’s interesting is that there is a striking similarity throughout the majority of confirmed breaches: 63 percent of confirmed attacks in 2016 involved weak or stolen passwords.
One of the biggest problem for the IT industry is user's bad habits. Weak passwords and their reuse on multiple websites every day potentially expose a billion users to cyberattacks.
It is not at all surprising that analysed 10 million hacked accounts from breached data dumps for the most popular passwords.
Despite the numerous awareness campaigns on a proper security posture, most used passwords continue to be "123456" and "123456789". Without any astonishment, "123456" accounts for 17 % of the overall amount of hacked accounts the firm used as data sample.
Disappointment over here is that the list of most popular passwords hasn’t changed over the years.
“Today’s brute-force cracking software and hardware can unscramble those passwords in seconds. Website operators that permit such flimsy protection are either reckless or lazy.”
2016 was another massive year for data breaches. The Keeper research team analysed over 10M passwords available on the public web, here's what they found:
How common are these passwords?
If my password is on the list, am I at risk?
How to protect your passwords from getting hacked?
Right now every organization across the globe is vulnerable to data breaches. Consider the fact that in 2016 alone, there were 64,199 security incidents spread across 82 countries.
Staggering numbers from security experts suggest that over 95 percent of all corporations have experienced a data breach of some kind – many of which can go undetected for months or years. What’s interesting is that there is a striking similarity throughout the majority of confirmed breaches: 63 percent of confirmed attacks in 2016 involved weak or stolen passwords.
One of the biggest problem for the IT industry is user's bad habits. Weak passwords and their reuse on multiple websites every day potentially expose a billion users to cyberattacks.
It is not at all surprising that analysed 10 million hacked accounts from breached data dumps for the most popular passwords.
Disappointment over here is that the list of most popular passwords hasn’t changed over the years.
“Today’s brute-force cracking software and hardware can unscramble those passwords in seconds. Website operators that permit such flimsy protection are either reckless or lazy.”
2016 was another massive year for data breaches. The Keeper research team analysed over 10M passwords available on the public web, here's what they found:
- Nearly 17% of users are safeguarding their accounts with "123456"
- After years of data breaches due to weak passwords, website operators are still not enforcing password best practices.
- Website operators must take more responsibility for password security.
How common are these passwords?
- Top 25 passwords of 2016 constitute over 50% of the 10 million passwords that were analysed.
If my password is on the list, am I at risk?
- Yes. Any of these passwords can be compromised in seconds by dictionary-based cracking tools.
How to protect your passwords from getting hacked?
- Use a variety of characters: Use a variety of numerical, uppercase, lowercase and special characters to have greater protection against a brute force attack.
- Avoid dictionary terms: Dictionary cracks guess passwords using lists of common passwords (see left) and then move to the whole dictionary. This is typically much faster than a brute force attack because there are far fewer options.
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