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from the deep-seated-insecurities-and-paranoia dept.
Why 'ji32k7au4a83' Is a Remarkably Common Password
For too many people, moving the digits around in some variation of Patriots69Lover is their idea of a strong password. So you might expect something complicated like” “ji32k7au4a83” would be a great password. But according to the data breach repository Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), it shows up more often than one might expect.
This interesting bit of trivia comes from self-described hardware/software engineer Robert Ou, who recently asked his Twitter followers if they could explain why this seemingly random string of numbers has been seen by HIBP over a hundred times.
Have I Been Pwned is an aggregator that was started by security expert Troy Hunt to help people find out if their email or personal data has shown up in any prominent data breaches. One service it offers is a password search that allows you to check if your password has shown up in any data breaches that are on the radar of the security community. In this case, “ji32k7au4a83" has been seen by HIBP in 141 breaches.
Several of Ou’s followers quickly figured out the solution to his riddle. The password is coming from the Zhuyin Fuhao system for transliterating Mandarin. The reason it’s showing up fairly often in a data breach repository is because “ji32k7au4a83" translates to English as “my password.”
Related: The password “ji32k7au4a83” has been seen over a hundred times, and the password "ji32k7au4a83" looks like it'd be decently secure, right?
Now if only there were one super secure password everyone could use so we would all be safe.
[There is! But it would require over 55 hours (at 5 characters per second) to type it in. --Ed.]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 06 2019, @07:13AM
2FA does make things safer. And in many cases, having a good password written on paper is much more secure than having a bad password that's written down nowhere, especially if you keep it at a place not easily seen (like in your pocket).
Of course storing passwords in an unencrypted file is utterly moronic. If it is an encrypted file with a good password you can remember, it is however quite secure, though.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.