Your password is not 'show tables...."

[artcurmudgeon]

Years ago when Hackers(1995) came out, I heard an over priced sysadmin say that the cat was now out of the bag and he had to change his passwords...

In the move Cereal Killer says that the most common passwords were:

god
love
secret
sex

This was the same douche who would run lophtcrack against his own NT DC so he could be nosy......

[Gizmo]

Quoth bunrotha

My personal favourite was a PBX default password of (almost) PleaseChangeMe! - which of course nobody ever would, because all the PBX maintainers knew that was the default password.

Because our lot at work can be a bit dense at times a good significant portion of our users have the same password as each other for everything. Some because they are never prompted to change it and some because they need it reset so often!

It did lead to this exchange the other week.

I'd been off sick and I needed one of my system passwords reset as the one I was sure it was wasn't working.

B: Boss
M: Me.

B: Its changed for you. Guess what it is
M: (BossName)IsWonderful?
B: Ha! I was going to change it to (BossName)IsGod but I thought that was tempting Murphy!

[EricKei]

As I recall, PC Mag and similar pubs will do an annual roundup of people's top ten most frequently used passwords...Sadly, the most common ones really do include Password, password, pass word, and minor variants on that. Other popular ones include their birthdate, their login name, their pet's name, and the current "flavor of the month" celebrity x.x "Admin" and "admin" aren't far behind; ditto no password at all where allowed.

To my fellow geeks: Yes, I know that a disturbing number of routers and such use admin or nothing as the default. I'm talking about passwords *after* the users change them >_>

[protege]

Quoth EricKei

To my fellow geeks: Yes, I know that a disturbing number of routers and such use admin or nothing as the default. I'm talking about passwords *after* the users change them >_>

Very true. Up until recently, we had something like that where I work. Nearly *every* piece of equipment had some variant of "Admin" or "Administrator" on it. Why, you ask? Simple, my boss wants everything set the same. That's why our individual workstations no longer have unique passwords. He actually bitched about how "difficult" it was to get into our computers "in case [he] needed something." Seriously? He bitched about how we got hacked...which was why we set up all this crap in the first place! So, every password, including the firewall(s) was set to his name. Yeah, I know...

Then we got hit *again,* and the damage was pretty bad. We're talking that our antivirus was disabled, some software (not ours!) installed from outside the network, and someone was flooding our firewall! Enough of a hassle, that once everything was put back to normal, he grudgingly allowed some serious changes.

[Deceptitech]

My password is simple. What.

[Mytical]

I one time offered the person who knows me the best in the world $300 cash if they could guess my password (at the time). It's been almost 20 years, and he hasn't been able to collect yet. Oddly enough, at the time it was just one capital letter .. formed an actual word..then two random numbers. Easy to remember.

[PepperElf]

back on my first navy ship i got bored with my password and changed it to fuck<shipname>

never got found out but these days i don't use anything so obvious

[dalesys]

Quoth PepperElf

back on my first navy ship i got bored with my password and changed it to fuck<shipname>

How come 90% of the crew have the same hash code for their password?

[EricKei]

Quoth protege

Very true. Up until recently, we had something like that where I work.

At the old AccountingFirm, we just made the boss man a Domain Admin. That way, he could access every comp.

However, the "[diety]" password that was set -- by his command -- on every piece of hardware in the office and every password-protected program was the same on every one. It was a viciously complex password...That was typed up on a little piece of paper taped to the inside of the door of the hanging file cabinet right next to the server. Anyone who EVER walked into that office and happened to set foot into the "Server room" (read: file cabinet closet) potentially had access to that password.

[rose_metal_nz]

All my passwords are date-based. With the "Passphrase" system (2 capitals, some lower cases, some numbers, some characters). My co-workers say that's "too complicated" All I have to remember is the date I changed it!
Now for the other dozens & dozens of work apps I have no choice in, that's another matter