1. Top 15 Most Used Password
2. Password Fun Facts
3. Password Attacks
4. Armour your Password

Aside from the Top 15 Most Used Passwords, there are some fun facts about passwords that most people use because it is also easy to remember. 

• • More women (222,287) in the US, use “iloveyou” for their password than men (96,785).
  • A stunning number of people love using their names as a password.
  • Ferrari and Porsche are the most popular car brands for bad passwords.
  • Swear words are quite often used as passwords. Research shows that men use swear words as passwords more often than their female counterparts.
  • One direction makes a comeback to the list of the most common passwords in several countries after mysteriously vanishing from the 2020 list.
  • Liverpool might be the most popular team globally, judging by how many times it has been used as a password.
  • This year, dolphins ranked number one among animal-related passwords in many countries.

Password attacks are one of the most common forms of corporate and personal data breaches. Password attacks are easy when hackers try to steal passwords. In 2020, 81% of data breaches were due to credential breaches. Passwords are less secure because they can contain only a limited number of letters and numbers. Hackers know that many passwords are not properly designed, so password attacks remain an attack vector. 

According to Onelogin, six types of password attacks might hit us anytime. You should beware of these attacks:

1. Phishing

Phishing is when a hacker disguised as a trusted party sends a fraudulent email hoping that you will voluntarily provide personal information. They lead you to a fake “password reset” screen from time to time. Otherwise, the link will install malicious code on your device. 

Related Article: Phishing: Definition, Types of Attacks, and Examples

2. Man-in-the-Middle Attack

Man-in-the-middle (MitM) is an attack when a hacker or compromised system sits between two non-breached people or systems and decrypts information passed to each other, such as passwords. If Alice and Bob pass notes in class, but Jeremy needs to pass those notes, Jeremy has the opportunity to be an intermediary. Similarly,  Equifax removed the app from the App Store and Google Play Store in 2017 because it shared sensitive data through insecure channels hackers may have used to steal customer data. 

3. Brute Force Attack

A brute force attack uses a battering ram if the password is equivalent to using a key to open the door. Hackers can try 2.18 trillion password and username combinations in 22 seconds. If the password is simple, your account may be cross-shaped. 

4. Dictionary Attack

A type of brute force attack, a dictionary attack, relies on our practice of choosing “simple” words as passwords. The most common is what hackers put together in a “crack dictionary”. More advanced dictionary attacks include personally essential words such as place of birth, child’s name,  pet’s name, etc. 

5. Credential Stuffing

If you’ve been hacked in the past, you know that your old password may be posted on a dubious website. Credential stuffing uses an account whose password has never been changed after an account violation. Hackers try different combinations of old usernames and passwords, hoping that the victim will not change them. 

6. Keyloggers

The keylogger is malicious software designed to track every keystroke and report it to hackers. Users usually download software believing that installing a keylogger without notice is justified.

To prevent yourself from those password attacks, you may need a strong password. Remember to protect yourself and your information, you need to use long, strong, and complex passwords for others to guess, but you are still relatively easy to remember. We have summarised some tips that may help you armour your password and data.