It’s no secret that hackers can most passwords in seconds but this new report shows they don’t even have to try, since people will use such weak passwords.
Did you know that a lot of people use “Samsung” as a password for their Samsung phones and their numbers are growing every year? That’s right: a simple word, a brand name at that, with no letters, symbols or other things to strengthen a password.
According to a study conducted by Nordpass, the makers of a password manager app, the use of the word “Samsung” as a password is alarmingly on the rise.
On a list of the most-used passwords in 2022, “Samsung” is on the 78th spot, jumping from the 198th spot it was in back in 2022. It’s a huge increase in popularity for an incredibly weak password but, in even more depressing news, “password” is still the most popular password.
Even though phishing and scamming attempts are getting increasingly sophisticated and stolen credentials can have a huge impact on people’s digital lives, weak passwords are still very popular.
The reasons for this are many, from users having too many services to sign up for, so they reuse passwords, to the lack of education on good password practices.
However, the solution is simple: just use a password manager.
This isn’t a plug for any solution in particular but password manager apps are incredibly effective at remembering your passwords and helping you have unique, strong passwords for all the services you use.
Nordpass’s report on the most common passwords shows how easy it is to crack a password. If you look at this guide showing how long it would take a hacker to guess your passwords, it’s clear just how important it is to follow security best practices.
A password like “123456”, “password” or “Samsung”, in this case, can be cracked in under a second. By simply adding more and different characters to a password, you can slow down a hacker significantly. For example, “col123456” would take 11 seconds to crack instead of the instant crack for the simple “123456”, while if you used a combination of words, numbers and special characters, hackers would have to spend an eternity to crack your password.
Also read: Think Your CEO Has A Strong Password? Report Reveals The Incredibly Stupid Passwords CEOs Use
Follow TechTheLead on Google News to get the news first.
