In the news:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/security/hotmail-hacks-easy-as-123456-20091008-go3f.html
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Password security was thrown into the spotlight this week after it was revealed that 10,000 Hotmail user names and passwords had been leaked online. A day later, a separate list of 20,000 addresses and passwords for Gmail, Yahoo and AOL were found on the web
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Bogdan Calin, of Acunetix, found "123456" and "123456789" were the most common, appearing 82 times, while 12345678, 1234567 and 111111 also appeared in the top 10.
Furthermore, 42 per cent of the passwords used only lower case letters from a to z. Just 6 per cent mixed letters and numbers.
The longest password was 30 characters - lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo - but this still evidently did not prevent the user's account from being hacked. The shortest password was one character: ")".
"A big majority of users still use very poor passwords," Calin concluded.
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