article_snippet: Millions still use easy-to-crack passwords such as ‘qwerty’ and ‘123456’, but many people are choosing to use more complex sets of characters for our online accounts.
article_snippet: However, a new study has found these seemingly random passwords may be more obvious to hack than you realise.
article_snippet: Researchers have shown that passwords such as ‘mnbvcxz’,
article_snippet: 10 million recently leaked passwords spotted that a number of complex passwords were being used by multiple people, such as ‘mnbvcxz’,
article_snippet: As with previous studies, researchers discovered the most common passwords are still ‘123456’,
article_snippet: But during The analysis researchers spotted that a number of complex passwords were being used by multiple people.
article_snippet: Like with previous studies, The analysis discovered common passwords are still ‘123456’,
article_snippet: On average more women were found to have longer passwords than men, with an entropy - or password strength - score of 25 and above.
article_snippet: Entropy is used to determine the strength of a password in terms of ‘information entropy’.
article_snippet: The more bits a word is assigned, based on the number of guesses a word would take to crack, the stronger the password.
article_snippet: There was an anomaly in this list, though, because the 20th most common keyboard pattern in this list of passwords was ‘adgjmptw’ - which on face value doesn’t appear to be an obvious keyboard pattern.
article_snippet: The study said that his pattern in particular shows how password selection is changing as more people create more people on touch devices.
article_snippet: In addition to these passwords being common, the researchers added that password crackers such as Passpat specialise in such patterns, leaving password crackers such as Passpat specialise in such patterns more vulnerable than some simpler passwords.
article_snippet: Elsewhere, nearly half a million - or 420,000 (8.4 per cent) - of the 10 million passwords ended with a number between 0 and 99.
article_snippet: Hackers can therefore try adding those numbers to the ends of words when trying to hack into an account.
article_snippet: On average more women had passwords with an entropy score of 25 and above and people born in the 1980s were the most likely to use the word
article_snippet: This means if a list is stolen, the plain text passwords can't be obtained easily However, this experiment shows this doesn't mean this experiment impossible.
article_snippet: Brute-force attacks is when a computer tries every possible combination of six letters and characters, starting with 'a' and ending with '//////.
highlights_snippet: Patterns are known as 'keyboard walks' and make passwords easy to hack .
  
highlights_snippet: Study also found women have better passwords, on average, than men .
  