It’s that time of year again! Are you as excited as I am?!!??!?!

Probably not, lol.  But that’s okay.  As long as you are ready for the unveiling of 2024’s most common (i.e. worst) passwords!

Did your favorite make the list?  I hope not!

NordPass just released their sixth annual research report on the most common passwords form the previous year, and this is our third year of sharing the results with you, here on the blog.  Let’s see what’s new!

(Spoiler alert: not much has changed)

This year, NordPass worked with NordStellar to analyze 2.5 TB of publicly available leaked passwords, from 44 different countries, previously stolen in data breaches or by malware. They didn’t buy any data, this stuff is just out there, if you know where to look.

This year’s twist is they used the attached email addresses to seperate out personal accounts from corporate accounts to see if people use better online hygiene at work.

(Spoiler alert: they don’t)

Let’s dive in, shall we? The suspense is killing me.

2024’s Top Twenty most used Corporate Passwords – Global

• 123456
• 123456789
• 12345678
• secret
• password
• qwerty123
• qwerty1
• 111111
• 123123
• 1234567890
• qwerty
• 1234567
• 11111111
• abc123
• iloveyou
• 123123123
• 000000
• 00000000
• a123456
• password1

Is anyone else sensing a theme here?

Alllllrighty then… are there any surprises?

My favorite has to be #29 on the global personal list:  tinkle.

That was unexpected, lol.  But having recapped the results over the last few years, nothing else really was a surprise.

On top of all the numerical and keyboard pattern passwords, I’d have to again suggest not using your kid’s name, especially if your loved one is named michael, daniel, michelle, charlie, princess, jordan, jessica, ashley, jennifer, thomas, andrew, nicole, anthony, jonathan, hunter, justin, samantha, joshua, alexandar, hannah, andrea, matthew, william, robert, amanda, benjamin, chelsea, maggie, killer, or cheese.

WAIT… hang on a sec…

#5 on the Corporate list from America we have aaron431.  It was used 3908 times, as far as we know.

AARON.  What are you doing, bud? There has to be something else behind this, right?  Not just one dude who reuses the same password thousands of times? A quick googling only showed the Topps #431 baseball card was for Aaron Rodgers, and a few people on Reddit asking why this password is so prevalent, going back to at least 2022. No good answers, as far as I saw.   

We may never know.  Or it’s going to take more research than I’m willing to give it, anyway.

So… What’s the takeaway here?

The usual really – don’t be basic with your passwords.  Get a password management program to help you make and remember long, weird, complicated passwords and never ever reuse passwords between accounts.

Use Multifactor Authentication if possible, and consider using passphrases or passkeys.

Learn more about what to do and what not to do with Passwords in our Bad Passwords Blog series, starting here.

And check out the rest of NordPass’ list for 2024 here.