The recent Ashley Madison hack, known to be one of the biggest hacks in history, has swiped the most intimate information of an estimated 36 million accounts associated with the cheating site.
The month following reports of the data breach, on August 18, hackers released their first stolen data dump, including email addresses, credit card transactions, and more. Days later, even the internal emails of the website's parent company, Avid Life Media, were revealed.
Little by little, with more date being released to the public, it has become more apparent that strong passwords matter.
According to ZDNet, the tens of millions of passwords leaked were hashed, which meant they were cryptographically scrambled. This also means that they combined letters, numbers, as well as symbols, making them "very safe" in the land of the internet.
However, some - if not a lot - of people's passwords were revealed to be extremely common. The worst Ashley Madison passwords were reportedly terrible, as expected.
4,000 passwords were cracked, and one password simply floated on the top spot. The most common Ashley Madison password, it appears, was "123456." Ranking in second place is "password," which is perhaps worse. These two were closely followed by "12345," then "qwerty," then "12345678," "ashley," "baseball," "69696969", "football," and "f*ckyou."
It is commonplace for people to want to use easy-to-remember passwords, but with the recent Ashley Madison hack, more people are realizing how important passwords actually are. Hackers are aware of these the accounts which use these common passwords.
The Inquisitr reported that other commonly used Ashley Madison passwords are curse words, such as "A**hole" and "f*ckme."
Hackers are also aware of shortcuts taken in passwords, therefore it is definitely unwise to use your own name, child's name, even your pet's name. These are reportedly fairly easy to figure out, even by those close to you.
While not everyone has an Ashley Madison account, emails, bank account, work records, as well as health records are thought safe with passwords, but with the recent hackings online, this is becoming more untrue.
According to arstechnica, security expert Dean Pierce said that the technological advance called "bcrypt" can stop hacks, or slow them, but companies haven't really used it.
"With a dump this size, passwords will still pop out like crazy, because people always use weak passwords. Even with good hashing+salt, a poor (or non existent) password policy can put users at risk," said Pierce.
A full list of the worst Ashley Madison passwords can be downloaded via Google Drive here.
