'123456' most common password among Indians in 2023

NEW DELHI: In 2023, '123456' was the most common password among Indians and worldwide, a new report said on Thursday.

According to the password management solution company NordPass, people used the weakest passwords for their streaming accounts in 2023.

Words that refer to a specific location were also found in people's passwords. Internet users globally frequently search for country or city names, and India is no exception, with 'India@123' ranking high on the country's list.

The word 'admin', which, most likely, is one of the passwords that people do not bother changing, made it among this year’s most common passwords in India and many other countries, the report found.

Last year’s global winner 'password' did not leave Internet users’ passwords. In India, 'password', 'Pass@123', 'Password@123', and similar variations appeared among the most common passwords this year.

To find out about passwords Internet users employ for different platforms, researchers analyzed a 6.6 TB database of passwords, exposed by various stealer malware, which experts consider a huge threat to people’s cybersecurity.

"The scariest part is that victims might not even realise that their computer is infected. Bad actors tend to hide malware in well-crafted phishing emails, imitating a legitimate organisation, such as your bank or your company," said Tomas Smalakys, CTO at NordPass.

Almost a third (31 per cent) of the world's most popular passwords consist of purely numerical sequences, such as '123456789', '12345', '000000', and others.

According to the report, as many as 70 per cent of the passwords in this year’s global list can be cracked in less than a second.

Researchers suggested Passkeys as a new form of authentication for better security.

"This technology will help eliminate lousy passwords, thus making users more secure. However, as with every innovation, passwordless authentication will not be adopted overnight," Smalakys said.