by Personal passwords give you access to, among other things, your gaming accounts and the streaming platforms you use. It is all the more important that your passwords are not easy to crack. Unfortunately, a list of the most popular passwords for 2023 proves otherwise.
As you surf the Internet, you need more and more accounts and login details, which are absolutely necessary on different websites. Whether it’s your expensive gaming account, access to streaming providers or your online banking login details.
Without your passwords you will no longer have access to your data and the various platforms you use. However, many allow hackers to easily guess the passwords they use by choosing simple sequences of numbers or easy-to-guess words as their passwords. Here you can find out what the worst passwords of 2023 are. Is your favorite password included?
Most popular passwords are cracked within seconds
What are the weakest passwords this year? Security company Nord Security Inc. worked with independent researchers to compile a list of the most popular passwords. These have been published annually on nordpass.com since 2019.
Most results apply worldwide, but the top 200 can also be filtered by country of origin. Here are the 10 most popular passwords in Germany.
| rank | password | It took time to collapse | Number |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | administrator | < 1 second | 18,997 |
| 2 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 | < 1 second | 16,914 |
| 3 | zwieback | 2 hours | 9,039 |
| 4 | 12345678 | < 1 second | 5,860 |
| 5 | 123456789 | < 1 second | 5,515 |
| 6 | yxcvbnm | 6 seconds | 5,419 |
| 7 | password | < 1 second | 4,848 |
| 8th | crappy password | Two months | 3.011 |
| 9 | 1 2 3 4 5 | < 1 second | 2,897 |
| 10 | niklas23 | 3 hours | 2,818 |
Passwords made up of simple sequences of numbers and simple words like password/password are very obvious. Such passwords are discovered within seconds or even a fraction of a second. As a password becomes more complex, decoding takes much longer. This report shows how quickly passwords can be cracked.
How did this list come about? For this purpose, the US company and the external cybersecurity research group used huge databases. Their data was evaluated and analyzed. According to Nord Security Inc., no personal data was transferred.
The data obtained were recorded as purely statistical information. This allows for an individual assessment by country and category/platform used. The password lists from 2019 to 2022 can also be downloaded in PDF format by anyone interested.
Do gamers use better passwords than the general public? No, unfortunately this is not the case. Even in the gaming category the top 10 are almost exclusively chosen number sequences that can be quickly determined by hackers.
| rank | password | Number |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12345678910 | 112,900 |
| 2 | 987654321 | 40,653 |
| 3 | 87654321 | 23,323 |
| 4 | qwertyuiop | 16,846 |
| 5 | 12345678901 | 16,663 |
| 6 | 11223344 | 14,852 |
| 7 | 111111111 | 12,832 |
| 8th | 1234567891 | 12,724 |
| 9 | 12345678900 | 12,305 |
| 10 | 123456789 | 12,247 |
How is password strength calculated? Password strength was calculated by independent researchers. To do this, they evaluated the average number of attempts needed to crack a password for a specific platform/category. The best rating was given to a randomly generated password with 20 characters.
At least gamers aren’t last in terms of average password strength compared to other categories. This was given with the value 7.5. In other categories, users were still choosing insecure passwords. Passwords used on platforms for streaming services, online purchases and your own email address are rated even worse.
Tips for better passwords
What can I do to make my passwords harder to crack? Thanks to advanced technology, hackers can access data faster and easier. But the more secure the password, the more difficult it is for Internet scammers to do their job. There’s also now an artificial intelligence that listens to you as you type in your passwords.
Here are some tips for blocking hackers from and accessing your accounts:
- Choose passwords that are as strong as possible: the longer a password is, the longer it will take a hacker to decrypt it. Even better is a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters.
- An extra password for each login: Internet users tend to use a specific password for multiple websites at the same time. If a hacker gets hold of your data, he can easily steal your other accounts if your username/email address and password are completely identical. So force yourself to think of a new password every time.
- Update your passwords regularly: While you may use more complex passwords now, you may have older passwords that are very easy to guess. It’s best to update it as soon as possible. To be even safer on the Internet, it is advisable to continuously check even the most complex passwords.
- Use useful tools, after all, hackers do it too: in the arms race against hacking tools, you can now use programs that make password management easier or eliminate it altogether. With a so-called password manager, you only have to remember one master password. The manager handles all other passwords for you. Most tools also offer the feature of creating strong passwords with the push of a button.
You can find more tips for strong passwords here
