An easy game for hackers: That's how stupid the most popular passwords are

Data theft was a big issue in 2015. The greatest security risk came from the users themselves: on the list of the most popular passwords, the simplest solutions were at the top – again.

Reports of hackers, Trojans and dangerous malware were almost part of everyday life in 2015. Every computer user should have understood by now that good virus protection is a matter of course with the growing risk of cybercrime. But many are still carelessly putting their security at risk: The simplest solutions were at the top of the list of the most popular passwords this year.

It's hard to believe, but true: The password most frequently used worldwide was "123456" last year. This is what the Hasso Plattner Institute for System Technology (HPI) determined. The basis was 35 million stolen identity data, which cyber criminals published in 15 cases in special Internet forums in 2015 – including usernames, passwords and account numbers. The data comes from sources such as Skype, Twitter, the computer game Minecraft or the affair portal Ashley Madison.

"There were a lot of large data thefts this year, in which more than a million sets of identity data were stolen and then published," reports HPI Director Professor Christoph Meinel. The hackers saw a high potential for blackmail this year, especially on dating portals such as Ashley Madison or Adult Friend Finder.

Safety dummies in the majority

Users can use the institute's "Identity Leak Checker" to check whether they have been affected by data theft. The data comparison was used almost 100,000 times last year, and in around 13,000 cases the identity data actually circulated freely on the network. Since the service was launched in May 2014, a total of around 1.7 million visitors have used the HPI Identity Leak Checker. 160,000 alerts about published identity data have been sent out to date.

Most often, data thieves target passwords, and that's where users all over the world still seem to be particularly frivolous. Series of numbers or strings of characters on the keyboard (for example) are still particularly popular. Often given names or other terms from the dictionary are also used. The classic "password" is also impossible to kill. Actually unbelievable: series of numbers seem to exert a magical attraction on Internet users – by far the most popular password worldwide was again the series of numbers "123456" in 2015, followed by "123456789" and "12345678". A look at the top 15 of the institute causes disbelief to shake the head:

1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. 12345678
4. password
5. qwerty
6. adobe123
7. 1234567
8. 111111
9. 12345
10. 1234567890
11. 123123
12. Ich liebe dich
13. 000000
14. 11111111
15. abc123

The most common hacked services were hotmail.com, gmail.com, and yahoo.com. Most of the data comes from English-speaking countries, which is why the letter sequence "qwerty" is more common due to the different keyboard layout – but there is little hope that German users will be more cautious.

Anyone who uses one of the passwords listed above or who has been similarly careless when choosing their password should consider a new solution as soon as possible. A secure password basically consists of a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. Words that appear in Duden should be avoided, as well as obvious number combinations such as date of birth or postcodes – how to do it better, explains n-tv.de here.