A look back at the UK Cyber Survey is a wakeup call to update passwords
William Marshal
Posted On January 13, 2022
A look back at the UK Cyber Survey conducted by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in 2019 to study the compromised passwords and the patterns associated with it. As per NCSC UK Cyber Survey 42% of Brits are expected to lose their money to online fraud. And, 23.2 million compromised accounts worldwide were using 123456 as their password.
Brits were then asked to be safe after looking into the results of the UK Cyber Survey that exposed multiple gaps in security.
NCSC UK Cyber Survey and its breakdown
The survey was carried out independently and the findings were released in 2019. However, considering the importance of cybersecurity and password threats, The Cybersecurity Times thought it is important to spread the knowledge of password vulnerabilities, and how your current password looks for a study that is 2 years old.
If you think this is an old study, please check your passwords across platforms to see the pattern that is common with your password to the ones that was compromised. If you want to check for your password breaches in particular, please visit ‘Have I Been Pwned’ and you will know the breaches that compromised your credentials.
As per the study,
- Only 15% of the subjects know how to protect themselves from the internet threats.
- The common concern is money theft with 42% felt it could happen the next year as well.
- One among three depend on their friends/family for cybersecurity.
- Youngsters are more privacy aware compared to other subjects.
- 61% of subjects are daily active on social media
- Only 70% use smartphone PINS and passwords for their devices.
- Only 50% use strong passwords for their email accounts
Look at the UK Cyber Survey’s compromised passwords and their patterns
| Most used in total | Names | Premier League football teams | Musicians | Fictional characters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 123456 (23.2m) | ashley (432,276) | liverpool (280,723) | blink182 (285,706) | superman (333,139) |
| 123456789 (7.7m) | michael (425,291) | chelsea (216,677) | 50cent (191,153 | naruto (242,749) |
| qwerty (3.8m) | daniel (368,227) | arsenal (179,095) | eminem (167,983 | tigger (237,290_ |
| password (3.6m) | jessica (324,125) | manutd (59,440) | metallica (140,841) | pokemon (226,947) |
| 1111111 (3.1m) | charlie (308,939) | everton (46,619) | slipknot (140,833) | batman (203,116) |
Common names that were breached,
| 1. ashley | 432,276 | 11. andrew | 261,453 | |
| 2. michael | 425,291 | 12. joshua | 259,079 | |
| 3. daniel | 368,227 | 13. justin | 256,388 | |
| 4. jessica | 324,125 | 14. anthony | 256,277 | |
| 5. charlie | 308,939 | 15. jennifer | 245,653 | |
| 6. jordan | 297,882 | 16. robert | 233,773 | |
| 7. michael1 | 294,662 | 17. matthew | 221,591 | |
| 8. thomas | 284,148 | 18. andrea | 220,764 | |
| 9. michelle | 278,545 | 19. hannah | 219,400 | |
| 10. nicole | 278,170 | 20. george | 215,350 |
Premier League Team names as passwords that were breached,
| 1. liverpool | 280,723 | 11. mancity | 13,796 | |
| 2. chelsea | 216,677 | 12. palace | 13,796 | |
| 3. arsenal | 179,095 | 13. cardiff | 12,594 | |
| 4. man utd | 59,440 | 14. leicester | 7,921 | |
| 5. everton | 46,619 | 15. fulham | 5,984 | |
| 6. wolves | 35,256 | 16. watford | 5,563 | |
| 7. newcastle | 32,143 | 17. southampton | 3,691 | |
| 8. tottenham | 19,596 | 18. burnley | 3,494 | |
| 9. westham | 18,801 | 19. bournemouth | Not in the top 100k | |
| 10. brighton | 15,523 | 20. huddersfield | Not in the top 100k |
You can also look at the top 100,000 passwords (data from ihavebeenpwned) that were compromised. If you find your password in this list, please update it immediately.
Strong password practices for robust cyber hygiene
Cybersecurity is the new wealth of the 21st century and it will be more crucial once the evolution of Metaverse, Tesla, and other major tech giants up their game based on big data and privacy. Virtual Reality will take a new avatar once the Metaverse is released. The power of augmented reality with virtual reality may sound all fun and exciting but the cons could be extremely devastating if proper cyber hygiene isn’t practiced.
The cyber hygiene, best practices an all other things begins with ‘passwords’ first. Cybersecurity Times believes the device and credentials are two important things that connect to the web, while the devices are physical lets place the second important stuff next to our passwords.
Passwords play a vital role in account compromises, further concerns when a same password is used for multiple platforms. Practice password hygiene by replacing your weak passwords with strong ones, i.e; alphanumeric with a special character. Also ensure, you enable two-factor or multi-factor authentication based on the login options provided by the platforms.
For further hardening, use a password that is derived from a phrase, this is even stronger than the earlier suggestion. For example, ‘I Like to Play Football and Cricket during my teen’, now choose the first/last letter of the each word to coin your password, ‘iltpfacdmt’ or ‘ieoyldtgyn’. These phrases will be easy to remember and are quite strong to evade cyberthreats.
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