If its one of thousands upon thousands that were recently released over the Internet for Hotmail accounts that were hacked.
There were 10,000 passwords and user names that came from a well known and recently publicized phishing attack. They were posted to a site called PasteBin. They were quickly taken down. But Bogdan Calin of Acunetix copied the passwords before they could take down the list.
According to Mr. Calin “An anonymous user posted usernames and passwords of over 10,000 Windows Live Hotmail accounts to a web site called PasteBin. PasteBin is currently down for maintenance but I managed to get a copy of the list, and quickly generated some statistics from these passwords.”
Top 20 most common passwords:
1. 123456 – 64
2. 123456789 – 18
3. alejandra – 11
4. 111111 – 10
5. alberto – 9
6. tequiero – 9
7. alejandro – 9
8. 12345678 – 9
9. 1234567 – 8
10. estrella – 7
11. iloveyou – 7
12. daniel – 7
13. 000000 – 7
14. roberto – 7
15. 654321 – 6
16. bonita – 6
17. sebastian – 6
18. beatriz – 6
19. mariposa – 5
20. america – 5
What kind of passwords were on the list? :
- 3,713 = 42 %; lower alpha passwords : passwords containing only characters from ‘a’ to ‘z’. Example : iloveyou
- 291 = 3 %; mixed case alpha passwords : passwords containing characters from ‘a’ to ‘z’ and from ‘A’ to ‘Z’. Example: ILoveYou
- 1707 = 19 %; numeric passwords: passwords containing only numbers (’0′ to ‘9′) Example: 123456
- 2655 = 30 %; mixed alpha and numeric passwords: passwords containing characters from ‘a’-’z’, ‘A’-’Z’ and ‘0′-’9′. Example: Iloveyou12
- 565 = 6 %; mixed alpha + numeric + other characters. Example: 1Love You$%@
A majority of users still use very poor passwords:
- 42 % (lower alpha only)
- 19 % (numeric only)
- 6 % from all the passwords had passwords which use a selection of alpha numeric and other characters.
Statistics from 10,000 leaked Hotmail passwords
Its not very likely you’re in the 6% category. And if you’re not, then chances are, I know your password.
