Millions of people are using easy-to-guess passwords on sensitive accounts, suggests a study.
The analysis by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) found 123456 was the most widely-used password on breached accounts.
The study helped to uncover the gaps in cyber-knowledge that could leave people in danger of being exploited.
The NCSC said people should string three random but memorable words together to use as a strong password.
For its first cyber-survey, the NCSC analyzed public databases of breached accounts to see which words, phrases and strings people used.
Top of the list was 123456, appearing in more than 23 million passwords. The second-most popular string, 123456789, was not much harder to crack, while others in the top five included “qwerty”, “password” and 1111111.