Even as there is constant chatter about cyber security, malware attacks, internet safety, identity theft, and every other cybercrime possible, there seems to be a large section of people who aren't really bothered about coming up with strong passwords to protect their various online accounts. Maybe it is because of the difficulty in having different passwords for a number of digital accounts and gadgets people now have, many people tend to resort to easy passwords, without realizing that these can be cracked in less than a second by experts or hackers.
According to the findings by NordPass, a proprietary password manager, the most commonly used password is 123456, which takes one second to crack. As many as 3,63,265 Indians use this as a password.
'Admin' is the second most commonly used password by Indians. The number of people using this password, which takes one second to crack, is 1,18,270.
The third is 12345678, which again takes one second to crack. According to findings, 63,618 Indians use this as their password.
The next commonly used password is 12345 with 56,676 people using it. This too takes a second to crack.
Password comes next, with 52,334 users. This takes a second to crack.
The sixth commonly used password, used by as many as 49,958 Indians, takes five minutes to crack, and that is Pass@123.
The next one too takes a second to crack. With 41,403 users, 123456789 is the seventh most commonly used password by Indians.
According to the findings, it takes one year to crack the next commonly used password, Admin@123. This is used by 22,646 Indians.
The next one takes three hours to crack, and it is a tad patriotic—India@123. There are 16,788 Indians who use this password.
The 10th most commonly used password is admin@123. It takes 34 minutes to crack this password, used by 16,573 Indians.
"NordPass, in partnership with third-party researchers, analyzed passwords from a 6.6TB database. These passwords were stolen by various stealer malware, such as Redline, Vidar, Taurus, Raccoon, Azorult, and Cryptbot. Malware logs include not only passwords, but also the source website," the password manager said.
The researchers evaluated a 4.3TB database extracted from various publicly available sources, including those on the dark web.
Across all countries, 123456, is the most commonly used password, with 4,524,867 users, followed by admin (4,008,850) and 12345678 (1,371,152). The 10 most used passwords across the globe takes just a second to crack it.