Nov 14, 2024 12:30:00

The 2024 edition of the 'Most Commonly Used Passwords' is released, with 'Nyanmage' mysteriously ranking among Japanese companies

The official website of NordPass, a password manager developed by VPN service NordVPN, has announced the 2024 edition of its annual list of 'The World's Most Common Passwords.'

Top 200 Most Common Passwords | NordPass
https://nordpass.com/most-common-passwords-list/

NordPass, in collaboration with security firm NordStellar, analyzed a 2.5TB database extracted from various sources, including the dark web, to identify typical passwords for 44 countries around the world.

Below is a table summarizing the top 10 out of the 200 announced. In addition to '123456' taking the top spot for the second consecutive year, regulars such as 'password' and 'qwerty123' also made the list.

Ranking	password	Time it takes to crack	number
1	123456	Less than 1 second	3,018,050
2	123456789	Less than 1 second	1,625,135
3	12345678	Less than 1 second	884,740
4	password	Less than 1 second	692,151
5	qwerty123	Less than 1 second	642,638
6	qwerty1	Less than 1 second	583,630
7	111111	Less than 1 second	459,730
8	12345	Less than 1 second	395,573
9	secret	Less than 1 second	363,491
10	123123	Less than 1 second	351,576

'123456' has ranked first in five of the six surveys to date, making it the most popular password except in 2022, when it was surpassed by 'password.'

Other notable passwords include simple words such as 'dragon' at 20th place and 'monkey' at 21st place, as well as favorite words such as 'pokemon' at 69th place and 'naruto' at 137th place. Personal names such as 'michael' and 'daniel' are also seen here and there.

NordPass also creates rankings by country. Below are the top 10 passwords in Japan. Unfortunately, the overall trend is the same as the rest of the world.

Ranking	password	Time it takes to crack	number
1	123456789	Less than 1 second	15,682
2	password	Less than 1 second	15,139
3	12345678	Less than 1 second	14,612
4	1qaz2wsx	Less than 1 second	7,145
5	asdfghjk	Less than 1 second	6,901
6	asdf12345	2 seconds	6,284
7	aa123456	Less than 1 second	6,009
8	asdf1234	Less than 1 second	5,245
9	123456	Less than 1 second	4,840
10	1234567890	Less than 1 second	3,797

In addition to personal passwords, corporate passwords are also exposed. Below are the top 10 most common corporate passwords around the world.

Ranking	password	Time it takes to crack	number
1	123456	Less than 1 second	1,233,447
2	123456789	Less than 1 second	693,611
3	12345678	Less than 1 second	365,724
4	secret	Less than 1 second	339,202
5	password	Less than 1 second	196,477
6	qwerty123	Less than 1 second	144,238
7	qwerty1	Less than 1 second	137,903
8	111111	Less than 1 second	106,328
9	123123	Less than 1 second	102,207
10	1234567890	Less than 1 second	92,998

While a breach of a company's security can have more serious consequences than an individual's privacy, the commonly used password patterns are not all that different from those of individuals. NordPass commented, 'At the end of the day, people are people, and no matter where we are or what we do, we all share the same bad password habits.'

For Japanese companies, it was striking to see the character string 'nyanmage' ranked sixth. It is unclear whether this is related to the mascot character Nyanmage .

Ranking	password	Time it takes to crack	number
1	password	Less than 1 second	4,426
2	12345678	Less than 1 second	3,036
3	123456789	Less than 1 second	2,166
4	1qaz2wsx	Less than 1 second	1,512
5	asdfghjk	Less than 1 second	1,211
6	nyanmage	3 hr	1,017
7	aa123456	Less than 1 second	922
8	1234567890	Less than 1 second	861
9	12qwaszx	Less than 1 second	836
10	asdf1234	Less than 1 second	809

Also, 'takahiro' came in at 20th place. Considering that survey results show that business owners and managers also tend to use weak passwords, there may be a lot of 'takahiro' people in the upper echelons of Japanese companies.

NordPass summarized its findings so far, saying, 'After analyzing six years of data, we can safely say that people's password habits have not improved significantly. Despite efforts by many organizations to change attitudes, the problem remains widespread.'