32 Million Breached Consumer Passwords

[George Yves]

Millions of users are still very careless.
Here's the news:

Imperva Releases Detailed Analysis of 32 Million Breached Consumer Passwords

Data Security Firm's Report Highlights Consumer Susceptibility to Cyber Attack

Redwood Shores, CA – January 21, 2010 – Imperva, the leader in Data Security, announced today the release of study analyzing 32 million passwords recently exposed in the Rockyou.com breach. Imperva's Application Defense Center (ADC) analyzed the strength of the passwords in a report, Consumer Password Worst Practices, that analyzes 32 million passwords to help consumers and website administrators identify the most commonly used passwords they should avoid when using social networking or e-commerce sites.

The report can be downloaded at: http://www.imperva.com/ld/password_report.asp
The report identifies the most commonly used passwords:

   1. 123456
   2. 12345
   3. 123456789
   4. Password
   5. iloveyou
   6. princess
   7. rockyou
   8. 1234567
   9. 12345678
  10. abc123

"Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today's world of automated cyber attacks: with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second—or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes," explained Imperva's CTO Amichai Shulman. "The data provides a unique glimpse into the way that users select passwords and an opportunity to evaluate the true strength of passwords as a security mechanism. Never before has there been such a high volume of real-world passwords to examine."
Some key findings of the study include:

    * The shortness and simplicity of passwords means many users select credentials that will make them susceptible to basic forms of cyber attacks known as "brute force attacks."
    * Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). The most common password is "123456".
    * Recommendations for users and administrators for choosing strong passwords.


"The problem has changed very little over the past 20 years," explained Shulman, referring to a 1990 Unix password study that showed a password selection pattern similar to what consumers select today. "It's time for everyone to take password security seriously; it's an important first step in data security."
About Imperva

Imperva, the Data Security leader, enables a complete security lifecycle for business databases and the applications that use them. Over 4,500 of the world’s leading enterprises, government organizations, and managed service providers rely on Imperva to prevent sensitive data theft, protect against data breaches, secure applications, and ensure data confidentiality. The award-winning Imperva SecureSphere is the only solution that delivers full activity monitoring from the database to the accountable application user and is recognized for its overall ease of management and deployment. For more information, visit www.imperva.com.

[Mr.Agent]

lol the 4nd made me laugh who wouldnt guess that password ?

[MikeBCda]

Reminds me of an RPG my son steered me to.  At one point in the game you have to break into the master system, and you go all around the mulberry bush to acquire a device which can decrypt and reveal the password to allow you access.

The password turns out to be "default".    I was surprised to see that's not on Imperva's top-10 list, but it's gotta be way up there.