In anticipation of this past weekend’s premiere of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, many fans have clearly decided to express their excitement by making “starwars” one of their passwords.
It is one of the newest entries on 2017’s Worst Passwords of the Year, as determined by SplashData on its annual report. Use of any of the passwords on this list would put users at grave risk for identity theft.
In its seventh annual Worst Passwords report, compiled from more than five million passwords leaked during the year, “starwars” joins the list at #16.
“Unfortunately, while the newest episode may be a fantastic addition to the Star Wars franchise, ‘starwars’ is a dangerous password to use,” said Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, Inc. “Hackers are using common terms from pop culture and sports to break into accounts online because they know many people are using those easy-to-remember words.”
These past two years have been particularly devastating for data security, with a number of well publicized hacks, attacks, ransoms, and even extortion attempts. Millions of records have been stolen.
Even with the risks well known, many millions of people continue to use weak, easily-guessable passwords to protect their online information. For the fourth consecutive year, “123456” and “password” retain their top two spots on the list. Variations of each, either with extra digits on the numerical string or replacing the “o” with a “0” in “password,” comprise six of the remaining passwords on the list.
“Hackers know your tricks, and merely tweaking an easily guessable password does not make it secure,” says Slain. “Our hope is that our Worst Passwords of the Year list will cause people to take steps to protect themselves online.”
While some say baseball is America’s pastime, it is football that continues to dominate on the list of dangerous passwords. For the second year in a row, football is the only sport to crack the Top 25 — though it dropped four spots on this year’s list to the #9 spot.
For the romantics out there, the self-focused “loveme” has been replaced on this year’s list with “iloveyou.” Other new appearances on the list include “letmein”, “monkey”, “hello”, “freedom”, “whatever” and “trustno1.” One other new entry is “qazwsx” from the two left columns on standard keyboards – demonstrating the importance of avoiding simple patterns.
SplashData, provider of password management applications TeamsID, Gpass, and SplashID, releases its annual list in an effort to encourage the adoption of stronger passwords. According to SplashData, the over five million leaked passwords evaluated for the 2017 list were mostly held by users in North America and Western Europe. Passwords leaked from hacks of adult websites and from the Yahoo email breach were not included in this report.
Presenting SplashData’s “Worst Passwords of 2017”:
| Rank | Password | Change from 2015 |
| 1 | 123456 | Unchanged |
| 2 | Password | Unchanged |
| 3 | 12345678 | Up 1 |
| 4 | qwerty | Up 2 |
| 5 | 12345 | Down 2 |
| 6 | 123456789 | New |
| 7 | letmein | New |
| 8 | 1234567 | Unchanged |
| 9 | football | Down 4 |
| 10 | iloveyou | New |
| 11 | admin | Up 4 |
| 12 | welcome | Unchanged |
| 13 | monkey | New |
| 14 | login | Down 3 |
| 15 | abc123 | Down 1 |
| 16 | starwars | New |
| 17 | 123123 | New |
| 18 | dragon | Up 1 |
| 19 | passw0rd | Down 1 |
| 20 | master | Up 1 |
| 21 | hello | New |
| 22 | freedom | New |
| 23 | whatever | New |
| 24 | qazwsx | New |
| 25 | trustno1 | New |
SplashData estimates almost 10% of people have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on this year’s list, and nearly 3% of people have used the worst password, 123456.
SplashData offers three simple tips to be safer from hackers online:
- Use passphrases of twelve characters or more with mixed types of characters including upper and lower cases.
- Use a different password for each of your website logins. If a hacker gets your
password they will try it to access other sites. - Protect your assets and personal identity by using a password manager to organize passwords, generate secure random passwords, and automatically log into websites.
To help protect computer users from hackers and to do its part in preventing 2018 from becoming another “Year of the Hack,” SplashData is offering the full list of Top 100 Worst Passwords, a free one-year subscription for individuals to its Gpass password manager, and a TeamsID (password manager for enterprise workgroups) demo for businesses. Each of these free resources may be found at TeamsID.com.