The worst passwords of 2018 revealed: Is yours on the list?

Source: CNTN, by Guo Meiping‍; Top image via VCG

Maybe it's time to change your password.

A list of the worst passwords in 2018 was released on Thursday by software company SplashData after evaluating more than five million passwords leaked on the Internet.

In a Thursday press release, the company's CEO Morgan Slain said that using these easily guessable passwords will "put anyone at substantial risk of being hacked and having their identities stolen."

The sequence "123456" topped the list this year again, making it the five-time winner of this "award." According to the software company, almost three percent of those passwords analyzed used this password.

Digital sequences starting with "1" took four spots in the top 5. The other one, which ranks second on the worst password list, is the word "password."

Here are the top 25 passwords on the SplashData list:

CGTN infographic by Yin Yating

According to SplashData's estimation, almost 10 percent of online users have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on the 2018 list.

China built more skyscrapers in 2018 than ever before

Complicated equals safe?

A capital letter, a special character, a number, and different from your old combination – these are often the requirements you have to face when creating or resetting a password online.

So, you may come up with something similar to "12ThrEe$lol."

However, Bill Burr, father of the "Bible of Passwords" and a retired former manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology affiliated to the U.S. Department of Commerce, expressed his regret for suggesting the above rules in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on August 2017.

According to a cartoon piece by Randall Munroe, it would take 550 years to crack the password “correct horse battery staple,” all written as one word.

Photo via xkcd

Meanwhile, something like "Tr0ub4dor&3," which follows the rules that are widely adopted by government, businesses and other institutions around the world, would be cracked in just three days.

Source: CNTN, by Guo Meiping‍; Top image via VCG

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