Computer Security The Use of Weak Hotmail Passwords Make Phishing Attacks...

The Use of Weak Hotmail Passwords Make Phishing Attacks Easier for Hackers

password strength email loginIs it ever a good idea to use the password "111111" on a web-based email account? You might as well post your own login information online just like the hackers did with thousands of compromised Hotmail and Gmail accounts.

After hackers were able to compromise thousands of Hotmail accounts and post the details online, it was later revealed that many of the passwords used on the affected accounts were week or simple passwords such as "1234567".

It does not take an expert to figure out that "1234567" is not a very effective or remotely safe password to have. Because the Hotmail login credentials of thousands of users were posted onto PasteBin.com (site used to post and share snippets of source code) last week, security researchers among others were able to view them before they were taken down. After security researchers took a look at the data they surprisingly discovered that a large number of Hotmail users use very weak passwords ranging from "1111111" to "1234567". Strange enough, this type of password made up for the top 10% of the most common passwords used among these Hotmail users.

Poor password usage is a major factor in the reasons as to why a web-based email account is compromised. It is not much of a challenge for hackers to guess a password as simple as "111111" versus a strong passwords that utilizes a combination of letters, capitalized letters, numbers and sometimes, special characters when allowed.

It was found by security experts that about 60% of the compromised Hotmail accounts included passwords only made up of lower-case letters or just numbers by themselves. The longest password found so far by security researcher Bogdan Calin, was "lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo". Calin's research demonstrates that many internet users still use very poor passwords as other researchers can confirm these results through other previous findings.

The Top 10 passwords used among the thousands of compromised Hotmail accounts:

  1. 123456
  2. 123456789
  3. alejandra
  4. 111111
  5. alberto
  6. tequiero
  7. alejandro
  8. 12345678
  9. 1234567
  10. estrella

Precautionary Tip: Computer users are urged to utilize a strong password and change them often. To further assist computer users with improving their awareness of webmail security, we reveal 5 easy steps to keep hackers from accessing your Gmail or other Webmail Accounts.

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