Nuts and Bolts: hackables.

Britain's anti-spy organisation, GCHQ, has a special anti-cyber-crimes unit called NCSC.

A recent survey conducted on behalf of NCSC has managed to put a figure on something I've always been curious to know, namely: how many really stupid people are there in the world?

The answer seems to be about 23.2 million, because this is the number of people worldwide who have been identified as using 123456 as a computer password.*

NCSC has made some recommendations abut forming a more secure password, but sadly their suggestion of using three random words isn't often workable. There's usually only space for about eight characters, and two of those often have to be non-letters. (Don't these NCSC people live in the real world? I suppose you could have Tea4two!, but options are severely limited...

...Two4tea! works as well...)

Anyway, can we identify other stupid people by their easily-hackable passwords?

The commonest names used in passwords are Ashley, Michael, Daniel and Jessica - but perhaps that's just because people with these names are particularly adorable.

Similarly, the common use of football team names Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manutd probably only reflects the huge number of fans these fine teams have: they aren't all going to be geniuses, after all.

There's another group of music-themed passwords: Blink182, 50cent, Eminem and Slipknot (I am only slightly surprised that JSBach doesn't get in there) and then there is a group of the deluded, which begins with Superman and takes in Tigger and Batman. That isn't surprising at all.

The big problem, as you will already have realised, is that as passwords are secret they are actually of no use at all for identifying stupid people.

I can only suggest asking what's your password? 

If they tell you then it will be clear enough.

Word To Use Today: a good secure password. I suggest one based on the initials of a memorable phrase. 3Bm3bm stands for three blind mice, three blind mice, for example.

None of my own passwords are in this form.

*I know that this only gives us a minimum figure for the number of really stupid people in the world, but I'm taking the most optimistic possible view. 

Someone has to.