Guessing

  • Believe it or not, a lot of breaches start from a password being guessed. 
  • Default passwords for devices and software are well known and included on these lists!
  • Tools that can be used to scrape social media or websites for keywords to use and then substitute and add variations are used to generate more targeted lists
  • Be mindful of social media data when setting password reminders or security questions – and if that information is out there on the web
  • Password Managers can be used to generate long, unique, and complex random strings to use for account passwords, making it near-impossible for a password to be guessed. Use a random passphrase when a password manager is unable to be used
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  • There are many sites that list the most commonly used passwords:
  • Password, Password123, Password1!
  • 123456, 12345678, abc123,
  • Qwerty, qwerty123!
  • Football, baseball, monkey, iloveyou
  • SeasonYEARSpecial
  • Summer2023!
  • Fall2023!
  • Winter2023@