Do You Use One of the 10 Most Hacked Passwords?

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has revealed the most hacked passwords and are calling for people to do more to protect their online accounts.

Top of the list of most hacked passwords was ‘123456’ (23 million passwords), followed by ‘123456789’ and ‘qwerty’.

Names, musicians and football teams also came out as being amongst the most used passwords, with ‘ashley’, ‘blink182’ and ‘liverpool’ all proving popular.

The following were found to be the 10 most hacked passwords being used online:

123456
123456789
qwerty
password
1111111
12345678
abc123
1234567
password1
12345

Speaking about the research, NCSC Technical Director, Ian Levy, said: “Nobody should protect sensitive data with something that can be guessed, like their first name, local football team or favorite band.”

Password reuse

If you’re using the same password across multiple accounts, it makes life much easier for hackers. All they need is 1 password and they have access to multiple accounts.

Each time you set up a new online account, such as an email or social media account, come up with a new password.

On reusing passwords, the NCSC said: “Password reuse is a major risk that can be avoided – nobody should protect sensitive data with something that can be guessed, like their first name, local football team or favourite band.”

Make a secure password

Whether you’re an existing Boiler Guide customer or are looking to create an account to access our high-quality sales leads, think twice about the security of your password next time you use it to login.

Passwords are there to protect personal information yet they’re not always taken seriously. Rather than taking the time to put together a strong password, that will prevent a hacker from gaining access to an online account, it can be easy to quickly type something simple. Doing this could eventually lead to your account being hacked.

To protect your online accounts, the NCSC recommend sticking 3 different memorable words together.

The NCSC went on to stress the importance of a secure password: “Using hard-to-guess passwords is a strong first step and we recommend combining three random but memorable words. Be creative and use words memorable to you, so people can’t guess your password.”