Splash Data's "Worst Passwords of 2012"

Splash Data has released their list of "Worst Passwords of 2012". Splash Data has compiled their list of passwords based on databases of stolen passwords by hackers. Let's take a look at the first 25:


1) password (unchanged)
2) 123456 (unchanged)
3) 12345678 (unchanged)
4) abc123 (up 1)
5) qwerty (down 1)
6) monkey (unchanged)
7) letmein (up 1)
8) dragon (up 2)
9) 111111 (up 3)
10) baseball (up 1)
11) iloveyou (up 2)
12) trustno1 (down 3)
13) 1234567 (down 6)
14) sunshine (up 1)
15) master (down 1)
16) 123123 (up 4)
17) welcome (new)
18) shadow (up 1)
19) ashley (down 3)
20) football (up 5)
21) jesus (new)
22) michael (up 2)
23) ninja (new)
24) mustang (new)
25) password1 (new)

Each year hackers and their programs get more and more complicated, however they tend to stick to easy targets (yea I would too). If your passwords are on this list, I would probably recommend that you change it.... like last week. 

The best types of passwords have a mixture of letters, numbers, special characters, capital letters. I recommend a password of at least 16 characters, is easily memorable, still look like mashing on the keyboard to others, but has meaning, only to you. 

Take this for example, take one of your favorite songs and choose a line or two of it that you have memorized. Then take the first letter of each word and you have a pretty secure password. But lets not stop there. Capitalize those letters at random, maybe change a letter or two with a number/special character (such as s = 5 or s = $), or possibly add at random special characters / numbers to your password. Here is an example:

Journey - "Don't Stop Believin"


Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin' anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit
He took the midnight train goin' anywhere

40jA$tgliAlwsttmtgA/\jAcbbAri5dhttmtgA?/

Using this method I've created a memorable 40 character password that can have meaning to only me. Not only is this password long, but it also looks like mashing on the keyboard. This makes for a very secure password. Now this isn't the only method of making passwords, you can take this tweak it and make it your own, such as adding something about the website your using it on.

Disclaimer: Do NOT use this password ANYWHERE, because I have created it and posted it on the web it is no longer secure. However this method is tried and true.


Source [MaximumPC]