yet another password issue: the case study of Adobe

In case you didn't know, Adobe was hacked in October. Without getting too much into the details, let's say that a fellow blogger found out the 50 worst passwords of this story... Here are the first ten of this list:

  1. 123456
  2. 123456789
  3. password
  4. adobe123
  5. 12345678
  6. qwerty
  7. 1234567
  8. 111111
  9. photoshop
  10. 123123

password security: same old story

It may sound like basic knowledge to security people but for others, you need to know there's nothing new under the sun. A study that analyzed 3.4 million passwords tells you if yours is among the weakest... Here's an extract that shows these "bad passwords" according to their length and, oddly, we find the same passwords than above!

password security: what should you remember?

First thing first, if things haven't changed, it means that communication campaigns failed. So you should advertise about all that: it doesn't mean you have to scare people off. Instead, show them best practices:

  1. here's what make strong passwords
  2. and here's how to simplify the rules so that people don't feel like that's yet another burden

Finally, I'd bring you back to our password security blogbook which deals with the topic a step further.

Enjoy,

Rémi

You can find the French version of this blog post here.

Photo credit: copyright Nmedia - Fotolia.com