Weekly Viz 2021-12-13

What Does a Bad Password Look Like

This week, I found this dataset on Kaggle on 10000 common passwords. These days, when you create password, many websites force you to have a ‘strong’ password, with at least one number, one lower character, one upper character, and one special character. It’s interesting to see what the top worst passwords look like, as hackers can easily compile a list of them and try to log in your account with minimum effort.

My Visualization

I used an area chart on the top to show the distribution by password length and if it has digits only, characters only, or a mix of them. Then on the bottom, I display the summary stats of these bad passwords, and the list of them. You can click on a segment on the top chart to apply the filters on the bottom tables.

Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.

Dashboard link

Insights

• Most of the bad passwords are short (6-8 digits), with either all numbers, or all characters;
• Looking at the list of password, a very common way to generate a bad password is to use an english word (fall under the ‘all characters’ category);
• As for the bad all-numbers passwords, some common patterns are using a password looking like 1 to n, or a repetition of a certain digit, or your birthday/phone number…

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