'George' the Most Popular Password That's a Name

The most common type of password is a name, and the most common name password is George, according to a new analysis of compromised credentials found in the Dark Web.

ID Agent, a Kaseya company, found that names account for nearly 37% of password types per 1,000 records, followed by words (16.1%) and easy-to-remember keystroke patterns (8.7%). The findings were pulled from a random sample of more than 1 billion pilfered credentials in the past 12 months.

Passwords on average were 7.7 characters in length; the most popular word password was sunshine, and abcd1234 was the most common keystroke-pattern password.

The lame state of password creation doesn't really come as a surprise. "Passwords are often deeply personal expressions of oneself, with the goal of making them easier to remember. However, remembering which extension is becoming increasingly difficult in our hyper-digital daily lives," the company wrote in post on the data. "In fact, it is estimated that average US adult has between 90 and 135 different applications that require a set of credentials (usernames and/or email addresses and password combination) needed for access."

Read more here.

Check out The Edge, Dark Reading's new section for features, threat data, and in-depth perspectives. Today's top story: "7 Steps to IoT Security in 2020."