Most passwords can be cracked in less than a second, says a study

Poor password hygiene continues to pose a threat to personal data privacy, according to the fifth edition of the NordPass study. In 2023, the most common password among Indians was "123456", reflecting a concerning trend of weak password choices. Shockingly, approximately 31% of the world's most popular passwords consist of purely numerical sequences, such as "123456789" and "12345".

Notably, many internet users tend to opt for country or city names as passwords. In India, "India@123" ranked high on the list of commonly used passwords. Similarly, "barcelona" is trending in Spain and "kalamata" in Greece.

The study by NordPass also highlighted that people tend to use weaker passwords for their streaming accounts, possibly due to the convenience of managing shared accounts. However, when it comes to financial accounts, stronger passwords are employed.


Unfortunately, instead of improving password creation habits, internet users are sticking to pre-configured passwords. For instance, the word "admin" appeared among this year's most common passwords in India and many other countries, indicating that people often neglect to change default passwords.

Even last year's global winner, "password", continues to be a commonly used password among internet users. Variations such as "Pass@123" also appeared on the list of frequently used passwords in India.

Alarming findings from the study reveal that as many as 70% of the passwords in this year's global list can be cracked in less than a second, highlighting the urgent need for stronger password security measures.

To gain insights into the types of passwords used for different platforms, NordPass researchers analyzed a 6.6 TB database of passwords. The study sheds light on the varying strengths of passwords employed by users across different platforms.