These passwords can be cracked in less than a second

Thanks to the COVID-19-induced pandemic during the 2020-2021 period, people have become more comfortable using smartphones and computers for work and entertainment. There are more people online than ever before and the numbers continue to surge worldwide.

But, unfortunately, most people are naive and ignorant of cyber threats. People are losing more than $1 trillion annually to online scams globally. One of the primary reasons is that they use generic passwords that can be guessed in less than a second by cybercriminals.

NordPass in collaboration with NordStellar has released a new report that highlights how people and corporate employees vulnerable to cyber attacks due to predictable passwords.

The new report says that 78 per cent of the world’s most common passwords can be cracked in less than a second.

This year, the most common passwords are made of the easiest keyboard combinations of numbers and letters. India is no exception. 123456 is the most used password in the subcontinent.

The interesting thing about the NordPass report is that people reuse passwords for both personal and work accounts.

"No matter if I wear a suit and tie at work or I’m scrolling through social media in my pyjamas, I am still the same person. This means that regardless of the setting I am in, my password choices are influenced by the same criteria — usually convenience, personal experiences, or cultural surroundings. Businesses ignoring these considerations and leaving password management in their employees’ hands risk both their company’s and clients’ security online,” said Karolis Arbaciauskas, head of business products at NordPass.

10 most used passwords worldwide:

10 most used passwords worldwide.

10 most used passwords in India:

10 most used passwords in India.

NordPass has shared some valuable tips on how to create passwords to safeguard yourself from cyber attacks:

1) Ensure the password has a minimum of 20 characters, the longer the better and mix it with alphabets (lowercase and uppercase), special characters and numbers. It will be very difficult for the criminals to predict the password.

2) Never reuse passwords in new online accounts

3) If possible people are advised to switch to passkeys. Top platform owners such as Apple, Google and Microsoft offer passkey features on their respective devices

4) In corporate companies, employees are advised to use the Multi-factor authentication (MFA) feature to log-in to online accounts linked to work-related projects. It is very important to protect high-value trade secrets. If it gets into the hands of cybercriminals, they will sell them to the highest bidders and may cost the company very dearly.

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