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The ‘secret’ to a bad password

The ‘secret’ to a bad password

December 2024

by Jason Walsh

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If there’s one thing North Bay residents don’t need, it’s to have to keep track of another password. Office systems, memberships, applications, purchases, accounts, websites—pretty much any digital activity these days requires a password, with varying degrees of capital letters, numbers and symbols. Understandably, most Americans do their best to simplify their password overload. Some create easy-to-remember codes, such as family names and birthdates; others favor a hard-to-hack word, but then use it repeatedly.

Still others, according to a new survey, have truly waved the white flag on coming up with a decent password.

NordPass, a password-manager company, annually analyzes the personal and corporate passwords stolen by malware and exposed in data leaks—and creates lists of the most commonly used passwords. Based on this year’s list, many password users would be wise to save a lot of time and heartache and just email the malware miscreants your personal information directly. Though, they probably already have it, if NordPass’s list of easy-to-hack passwords is any indication.

Topping the list as the most common password across the 44 countries analyzed is none other than: 123456. Finishing a close second: 123456789. These types of passwords can be cracked by thieves in less than a second, according to NordPass.

The classic “password” is fourth, followed by “qwerty123.” Also among the top 10 favorites: 111111.

While most bad passwords know no borders (variations on 123456 are pretty universal), some do differ by country. The No. 1 password in the U.S., for instance, is “secret.” Canadians, meanwhile, frequently choose “hockey,” which placed 18^th on its list. Mexico’s top 15 includes “pokemon,” “america” and “hola.”

One might think the cyber-security-aware corporate world would be up on the latest hack-proof password trends. Well, not quite. According to NordPass, the top financial-industry passwords—these are the people guarding our money—are none other than “password” and “123456.”

Proving that conjuring secure passwords isn’t rocket science, the top aerospace industry passwords are “password,” along with “opensesame” and “baseball.” Across the 20 industries analyzed, they were all ripe with passwords along the lines of “company name1*” and the like.

Clearly, the cyber-hacking industry must be booming.

Sorry North Bay, but NordPass says the best ways to ensure a password’s safety is to make it at least 20 characters long and include a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special symbols. There truly is no safe way to escape password overload.