Security researchers from Outpost24 have published the results of their analysis on the reliability of passwords used by IT-system administrators. They conducted a study by analyzing accounts present at the Threat Compass service, which collects information about passwords obtained through malicious software and hacks. Through this, they were able to collect over 1.8 million passwords restored from Hashi related to administration interfaces.
The study revealed that administrators, like ordinary users, tend to choose predictable passwords. The most popular password, mentioned over 40 thousand times in the assembled database, was “Admin”. This password’s popularity can be attributed to its use as a default password on certain devices, where developers assume that administrators will use a typical password for initial setup before changing it.
Among administrators, the following are the 20 most popular passwords: