It is none other than 123456 followed by 123456789 and qwerty according to scientists who reviewed 10 million security codes becoming public following data breach.
In the top 10 list, 4 passwords were six characters or shorter namely '12345678', '111111', '1234567890', '1234567', 'password', '123123', '987654321.'
Brute force cracking software and hardware can beat these passwords in seconds!
Nearly 17 per cent of users are safeguarding their accounts with '123456'.
What really perplexed scientists is that so many website operators are not enforcing password security best practices.
The study found that the list of most-frequently used passwords has changed little over the past few years, which means that user education has limits.
The presence of passwords like '1q2w3e4r' and '123qwe' indicates that some users attempt to use unpredictable patterns to secure passwords,.
Dictionary-based password crackers know how to look for sequential key variations and can crack such passwords in seconds.
