There’s a big lie out there about passwords that a lot of folks buy into. Checking the list of the passwords that are cracked most often proves the point:
- 123456
- 123456789
- qwerty
- password
- 1234567
People choose passwords like this because they are simple to type in and remember but also out of the mistaken belief that nobody will believe they chose something so simple as their password. Sometimes they think changing up one number or letter will throw some hacker off the track. You know passwork or 1239456.
There are some major flaws in that logic. The first is that cyber crooks don’t already know that people are incredibly lazy when it comes to passwords. They know. They’re professionals and it’s their multi-billion dollar business to know these things.
Secondly, it’s not an individual trying different password combinations over and over again to break into your account. It’s a group of professional hackers running sophisticated software that can rabidly try all sorts of letter and number combination. That software doesn’t have pre-conceived notions about which passwords are so simple that no one would use them. It just runs the letters and numbers and it starts with the ones that are most commonly used. The passwords above are most often cracked in less than 1 second.
It’s a bit like leaving your keys in your car because you think no car thief thinks anyone is that stupid.