

List of hacked passwords reveals '123456' is most popular - gscott
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/120554

======
freejoe76
The percentages on password-use percentages on this article shouldn't be taken
too seriously. More than 200K accounts were compromised -- of those 200K,
about 27K passwords were recovered. Those 27K passwords were recovered because
they were able to be looked up on a md5 lookup website.

~~~
lonestar
If I recall correctly, the ~27k were not the easiest to lookup, but just the
first 27k that the attacker looked up. He said he just got bored after that
many.

------
j2d2
_Recently a niche programming-oriented website called phpbb.com_

Ouch. They didn't have to say niche.

------
noodle
thats amazing! i've got the same combination on my luggage!

------
teej
Stuart Brown of the blog Modern Life did a good article on this almost 3 years
ago, revealing trends in passwords used in the UK.
[http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/top-10-most-
com...](http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/top-10-most-common-
passwords)

I wish he still blogged, he had an amazing signal-to-noise ratio, posting
frequency, and article quality.

------
albertni
It used to surprise me that something like "asdfasdf", which is probably the
easiest/fastest to type password (at 6+ digits) never shows up on these kinds
of lists. But I guess when most people in the world are typing words out one
letter at a time, it really doesn't make a difference.

~~~
asmosoinio
But they do, see Robert Grahams full article:

> 14% of passwords were patterns on the keyboard, like "1234," "qwerty," or
> "asdf."

------
jpwagner
Were these passwords being stored as plain-text?

~~~
lonestar
No, they were stored as unsalted MD5 hashes.

------
herval
phew, I'm relieved. I always use '12345' instead...

------
SwellJoe
I outsmart them all. I use "1234fivesix".

------
njharman
ha, that's why I always use 011235!

