What are the most common passwords? No surprises here

"Tech advice website Comparitech on Thursday published the 100 most common passwords based on a deep dive into more than two billion passwords leaked on breach forums in 2025. The three mentioned above all finish in the top ten, along with various variations of the numerals 1-9 in ascending sequential order. Of course, no list of common passwords would be complete without such innovations as Aa123456, the sixth most common entry on the list, or the radically different Aa@123456, which came in at the 13th position."

"Combinations of qwerty and other keys sequentially in the first row of the keyboard were also common entries. Spice them up with a few numbers, like 1q2w3e4r, and you have yourself another popular combination. Funnily enough, gin - yes, just straight gin - was the 29th most popular entry, while the somewhat more unique, but clearly still popular India@123 ranked 53rd. In a nod to Gen-Z, minecraft (lowercase "m"), the title of the popular Microsoft voxel building sandbox game, rounded out the top 100, appearing 69,464 times in a list of two billion passwords."

"A full quarter of the passwords on the list, the study found, consisted solely of numbers, making them quite easy to suss out. Thirty-eight percent specifically contained the string 123, and another two percent included the inverse, 321. "Modern password cracking programs make short work of weak passwords," the site said in what's surely not a shocker to El Reg readers. "Common passwords are easily guessed. Short passwords are easily brute-forced.""

An analysis of more than two billion leaked passwords produced a ranked list of the most common passwords in 2025. Predictable numeric sequences like 123456, along with simple words such as password and admin, remain extremely common. Variations that append letters, symbols, or keyboard-pattern sequences like Aa123456, Aa@123456, qwerty combinations, and 1q2w3e4r are widespread. Single-word choices including gin and minecraft also appear frequently. Twenty-five percent of passwords used only numbers; 38% included '123' and 2% included '321'. Short, common passwords are easily guessed or brute-forced by modern cracking tools, increasing compromise risk.

Read at Theregister