Gardaí have warned Irish people against using generic passwords like “123456”, “password” and “Liverpool”.
This comes after a data breach of that left thousands of drivers’ personal information exposed.
Also exposed was a number of confidential documents related to car accidents, towing incidents and seizures, exposed online.
The Irish Independent revealed that the data breach was the result of a software error at an IT services firm working for tow trucks that have contracts with An Garda Síochána.
A Garda spokesperson told the Irish Independent that it was not its responsibility to investigate the publication of confidential information on garda names or other sensitive personal data in the exposed documents.
The spokesperson said that it was not the “data controller” and it was up to third-party organisations to investigate the matter.
Speaking about the prevalence and guessability of certain passwords, the director of the National Cyber Security Centre, Richard Browne, said “strong, long and diverse” passwords were best.
“The longer the password the more difficult it is to break,” he said.
“If you go to 10 characters or more it gets very, very difficult to break it.”
According to research from Cork-based organisation Cyber Skills and the security website HaveIBeenPwned.com, “123456” remains the most guessable passwords in the world, appearing in more than 37 million breached accounts.
The password “password” appears in 9.7 million breached documents, while “Liverpool” turns up 448,000 times.
Other commonly used, easily guessable passwords include “111111” (4.8 million times), “f***you” (808,000 times) and “letmein” (340,000 times).
The research also shows that Christian names are predictably used, with “Sinead” popping up 9,400 times.
Irish sport and pop stars are sometimes guessable as passwords. “Roykeane” was used 2,862 times, “U2bono” was used 2,345 times and 46 people used “conormcgregor”.
A small number of people use well-known political figures or parties as passwords. “Sinnfein” was used 1,530 times, while “fiannafail” was used 75 times and “finegael” was used just 45 times. “Gerryadams” was used 54 times, while “varadkar” was used just six times.
A number of old television show names also featured, such as Glenroe.
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