Most used passwords of 2015 revealed, show ‘Star Wars’ and ‘princess’ as new entries

The two most popular passwords of last year — ‘123456’ and ‘password’ — remain unchanged, but some of the rest seem to be affected by changes in popular culture

Andrew Griffin
Tuesday 19 January 2016 17:42 GMT
Comments
The National Cyber Crime Unit has revealed that some hackers are offering ‘cybercrime as a service’, and have created a marketplace where gangs can bid for targets to be attacked
The National Cyber Crime Unit has revealed that some hackers are offering ‘cybercrime as a service’, and have created a marketplace where gangs can bid for targets to be attacked (Reuters)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

The most used passwords of 2015 have been revealed — and show that people are still using passwords that are obvious and mostly the same as 2014.

In a finding that is likely to worry security professionals, the most popular passwords continue to be very easily guessable.

The most popular password is “123456”, as it was last year, and different lengths combinations of the same pattern make up six of the top ten passwords. Much of the rest of the top ten are equally uninspired — “password” and “qwerty” also make the cut.

But the list of passwords does have some new additions. That includes “starwars”, which comes in at 25 as a new entry in the password chart, and the return of “princess” to the list might have come from the same source of inspiration.

The entry of Star Wars into the list perhaps shows how the most popular passwords sway with popular culture. It was perhaps the premier of Game of Thrones’ fifth season that took Dragon up to number nine last year, for instance — but that’s fallen back down to 16th.

The data also show that sports are still popular. Football has beaten out baseball, but both are still high on the list.

SplashData’s list of passwords is collected by looking at leaks from stolen passwords that are publicly available. It takes all of those more than two million passwords and then amalgamates them, looking for the most popular combinations.

The company compiles the list every year. And the data usually shows the same conclusions — password and “123456” vying for the top spot.

The full list of passwords is as follows:

1. 123456 (Unchanged)

2. password (Unchanged)

3. 12345678 (Up 1)

4. qwerty (Up 1)

5. 12345 (Down 2)

6. 123456789 (Unchanged)

7. football (Up 3)

8. 1234 (Down 1)

9. 1234567 (Up 2)

10. baseball (Down 2)

11. welcome (New)

12. 1234567890 (New)

13. abc123 (Up 1)

14. 111111 (Up 1)

15. 1qaz2wsx (New)

16. dragon (Down 7)

17. master (Up 2)

18. monkey (Down 6)

19. letmein (Down 6)

20. login (New)

21. princess (New)

22. qwertyuiop (New)

23. solo (New)

24. passw0rd (New)

25. starwars (New)

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in