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

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)

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)