Hotmail Phishing Scandal Shows Most Common Password Is 123456

A detailed analysis of the list of Hotmail passwords that were leaked on Pastebin.com showed that the most commonly used password is the string "123456" which appeared 64 times in all.

According to Bogdan Calin, chief technology officer at web application security company Acunetix, who got hold of the list before it was pulled from the developer code sharing website, only 90 percent of the valid passwords unique.

Interestingly, most of the names in the top 20 most common passwords in the lot were Hispanic ones which lead Mr Calin to believe that the phishing kit which collected the names was targeting the Latino community.

More than half the passwords had a character length of 9 or less with only six percent mixing alphanumeric and non-traditional characters together, a combination which is considered by security experts to be the most secure.

The passwords were collected using widespread phishing techniques that include sending "security" emails asking customers to re-enter their login details, sending fake instant messaging invites to new services or impersonating someone in the victim's network.