According to a recent report most computer users still don’t have adequate password protection, despite calls by security experts to use more robust passwords. In fact, in a list of the easiest-to-hack passwords, simply typing '123456' took a truly forgettable top prize.

Internet security firm Imperva recently released its list of the passwords most likely to be hacked based on 32 million instances of successful hacking. Imperva named their report "Consumer Password Worst Practices," and some of the entries near the top are truly simple and could lead to theft or identity fraud.

Top 10 Worst Passwords:

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

How to Strengthen Your Passwords

Other key findings in the report: it seems that almost one in three users choose passwords comprised of six or fewer characters; more than half use passwords based on only alpha-numeric characters; and almost 50 per cent used variations on their name, popular slang terms, or simple strings of consecutive characters from the average QWERTY keyboard -- such as 'asdfg'.

Imperva has made several obvious recommendations, suggesting most users adopt passwords with at least eight characters and to mix those characters between upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Passwords should be simple enough that they won't be too easily forgotten, but the idea is to make cracking the code virtually impossible for either an unknown or known hacker.

You have been warned!

© Paul Whitelock

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