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A Popularity Contest You Don't Want to Win: Passwords


Imperva, a security vendor, picked up on a major hacking of the social-networking site RockYou.com, which resulted in the exposure of 32 million user IDs and passwords. The result was a view of the most commonly used passwords of all time. The list is topped off by passwords such as "12345," "123456," "123456789," and the old standby, "password." Ironically, the problem has changed very little over the past 20 years, Imperva notes. In 1990, a study of UNIX password security revealed that password selection is strikingly similar to the 32 million breached passwords. Just 10 years ago, hacked Hotmail passwords showed little change.

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