1234仍是最常用密碼 1/10密碼一次即可猜中

Despite a rise in credit card fraud, the most commonly-used PIN is still 1234, with 1111 and 0000 coming in second and third.

Research has revealed that one in ten codes is so obvious it would take criminals just one attempt to guess it correctly, while more than a quarter of the codes are used so often they can be guessed in fewer than 20 attempts.

The study from DataGenetics analysed 3.4 million four-digit codes and found that many people use birth years as PINs, making it even easier for hackers to guess a code simply by finding out a person's age from online accounts.

Research from security experts McAfee has found that 17 per cent of people in Europe have been victims of credit card fraud, at a cost of £1,076 per person.

Last year the total cost of credit card fraud in the UK from criminals hacking and cloning cards was £42.1 million and the total amount of fraud committed through all credit card-related crimes was £388 million.

There are 10,000 possible combinations for four-digit PIN codes using 0 to 9.

DataGenetics used data from previously released password tables and security breaches.

By combining the password databases, researchers filtered the results to show just four-digit numbers and were able to analyse 3.4 million four-digit passwords.

They discovered that all of the possible 10,000 combinations - from 0000 to 9999 - were found in the data list.

The most popular password was 1234, but the amount of times this number occurred 'staggered' the researchers - almost 11 per cent of the 3.4 million passwords were 1234.

This PIN was also more popular than the 4,200 codes at the bottom of the list combined.

The next most popular 4-digit PIN was 1111, used more than 6 per cent of times.

In third place was 0000 at two per cent.

Data Genetics compiled a list of the top 20 passwords and found that 26.83 per cent of all the passwords in the list could be guessed by attempting these 20 combinations.

The researchers said: 'Statistically, with 10,000 possible combinations, if passwords were uniformly randomly distributed, we would expect these twenty passwords to account for just 0.2per cent of the total, not the 26.83 per cent encountered.'

The more popular password selections dominate the frequency tables and the study found that 10 per cent of PINs could be guessed correctly first time.

More than 20 per cent could be guessed by using just five attempts and statistically, one third of all codes could be guessed by trying just 61 distinct combinations.

The data found that the least-used code was 8068 with just 25 appearances in 3.4 million - far fewer than random distribution would predict.

The researchers also noted that many of the high-frequency PINs could be interpreted as years because many began with 19, for example, 1984, 1967 and so on.

This could be a birth year or anniversary and if a hacker can guess someone's age, or even obtain it through birth records or online accounts, for example, they could make an educated guess at the PIN.

In fact, every single 19+ combination appeared in the top fifth of the list.

The majority of PINs in the DataGenetics list began with the number one, which may be due to the popularity of using birth years.

The numbers zero and two were also popular.

The research found that the higher the number from 0-9, the lower its frequency at the start of the code.

A recent study found that a pet's name is the most common online password.

As many as one in six people uses their pet's name as a password.

One is six Britons admitted accessing someone else's account by guessing the password, with partners the most common target, followed by exs.

One in ten people has also guessed a work colleague's password, the study by Google Apps found.據英國《每日郵報》8月2日報道，科技顧問公司數據基因（DataGenetics）在對340萬個四位密碼進行研究後指出，1234仍是人們最常使用的密碼組合，比例接近11%。

根據該項研究，在這340萬個四位密碼中，嘗試一次即被破解的密碼高達10%，嘗試不到20次就能破解的密碼超過了25%。同時，研究人員還發現以19開頭的密碼出現的頻率非常高，其主要原因應該是人們往往喜歡用自己的出生年份作爲密碼，這也讓黑客有了可乘之機，他們只要通過這些人的網上賬戶查到其年紀，就可以輕易破解密碼。

對於使用0到9這10個數字的四位密碼來說，一共有1萬種組合。儘管近年來信用卡欺詐案件不斷增多，但人們最常用的四位密碼仍然是1234，1111和0000分別排在第二位和第三位。此外，數據基因公司還發現了一個比較有趣的規律，1在密碼組合中的開頭被用到的頻率最高，0和2也很受歡迎，數字越大，用在密碼開頭的概率就越低。

網絡安全軟件供應商邁克菲（McAfee的）研究發現，歐洲地區有17%的人曾是信用卡欺詐案的受害者，平均每人因此損失1076英鎊。英國去年由於黑客入侵和複製銀行卡等犯罪行爲所造成的損失爲4210萬英鎊，而與信用卡有關的詐騙犯罪造成的損失則高達3.88億英鎊。

數據基因公司列出了最常用的前20個常用密碼，發現其中26.83%的密碼只需經過20次嘗試就能破解。“如果密碼是隨機均勻分佈的，在這1萬個密碼組合之中，這20個密碼所佔據的比例應該只有0.2%，而不是如此驚人的26.83%，”研究人員介紹說。在被調查的340萬個密碼中，有10%能在第一次嘗試時被破解，有20%能在5次嘗試後被破解，有1/3的密碼在嘗試61次後可以被破解。此外，最不常用的密碼組合是8068，僅僅出現了25次。

一項研究發現，寵物的名字也是網上比較常見的密碼，多達1/6的人們會使用他們的寵物名字作爲密碼，還有1/6的英國人承認自己曾經通過猜測破解過某人的賬戶密碼。Google Apps指出，1/10的人能夠破解自己同事的賬戶密碼。