Passwords From PHPBB Attack Analyzed

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday February 7, 2009 @05:19AM from the convenience-trumps-security dept.

Robert David Graham writes "The hacker who broke into phpbb.com posted the passwords online. I was sent the password list, so I ran it through my analysis tools and posted the results. Nothing terribly surprising here; 123456 and password are the most popular passwords as you would expect. I tried to be a bit more creative in my analysis, though, to get into the psychology of why people choose the passwords they do. '14% of passwords were patterns on the keyboard, like "1234" or "qwerty" or "asdf." There are a lot of different patterns people choose, like "1qaz2wsx" or "1q2w3e." I spent a while googling "159357" trying to figure out how to categorize it, then realized it was a pattern on the numeric keypad. I suppose whereas "1234" is popular among right-hand people, "159357" will be popular among lefties.'"

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Left and right reversed? by argent · 2009-02-07 05:28 · Score: 1, Redundant

I suppose whereas "1234" is popular among right-hand people, "159357" will be popular among lefties.
Last time I looked, the keypad was on the right of the keyboard. ^^
Obligatory by mishehu · 2009-02-07 06:32 · Score: 0, Redundant

So the combination is 1... 2... 3... 4... 5...? (stops to open up mask) That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!