Some Passwords are Always In Vogue

The recent hack of Gawker, which operates sites such as Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and Deadspin, revealed one important fact: Passwords are like fashion, and some Paswords are always popular, irrespective of which year one looks at.

An analysis of almost 200,000 hacked Gawker passwords, as conducted by the Wall Street Journal, revealed that the most popular password by far was '123456.' Coming in second and third were 'password' and '12345678', respectively.

Rockyou.com was hacked just over a year ago, and the results of that hack showed the same trends -- ananalysis by Imperva revealed that '123456' was again at the top of the list.

So in a years time a sizeable number of people are using the same password combinations to lock their cyber homes.

Another, revelation, that again mimicking fashion is, a way too many people are wearing the same clothes to multiple parties. Just like password combinations, a sizeable number of people are using the same password combination for multiple sites. Hack one and get all, opportunity for hackers.

Conclusion:  It’s too sermoning to say that people should use those password combinations that are hard to crack – as in reality, if a person is exceptional at innovating and using technology, no character password used at present, is secure enough to not get cracked. In cases where passwords of normal people are hacked, that is either due to Gawker like hacking, where the hackers hacked, say the treasury or the Bank and left with 200,000 usernames and passwords; or by someone close to the user who has studied the other person well and is in access of many other details about the person; and it’s some revenge rather than anything that is encouraging the former to put hours into figuring out the combination.

So until, better secure login measures like biometric identification, finger print, eye identity etc. don’t become a standard; no matter what countless Dos and Donts reckoners on creating a password like using special characters, upper-lowercase mixing, linguistic/language-mixing, using unique passwords for different accounts, changing passwords regularly and not revealing your password to your boyfriend/girlfriend no matter how mushy you two are; say people will choose the same passwords they used at Gawker and at Rockyou. Reason is: World is Time skint and intrinsically lazy (otherwise why one earth, so many people run sites that tell nothing but Hot Keys or keyboard shortcuts).

On a different note: Businesses will not secure themselves until the security becomes inexpensive.

So things will run the same.

What should be the utopian practice at present w.r.t passwords:  Listening to what countless Dos and Donts Reckoners on creating a password suggest. --------

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