A study of more than 3.3 million leaked passwords in 2014 has been released, exposing the most overused, predictable passwords.

A study of more than 3.3 million passwords leaked in 2014 has been released, exposing the most overused, predictable passwords.

SplashData released the annual top 25 most common passwords, which represent 2.2% of the 3.3 million leaked passwords studied. According to PC Advisor, this represents a decrease, although by our calculations that still means over 72,000 of the passwords leaked in the sample were in this list. PC Advisor speculates that the decline may be down to a wider awareness of the importance of security, with a number of high profile password leaks pushing the issue up people’s agendas in the last year.

That doesn’t change the top two from remaining the same as 2013, though, with the worryingly weak ‘123456’ and ‘password’ occupying the top slots. Elsewhere in the list though, a number of single word new entries emerge, including ‘michael’, ‘mustang’, ‘baseball’, ‘football’, ‘superman’, ‘batman’ and ‘dragon.’ The last of these, CNET speculates, may owe to the growing popularity of Game of Thrones.

Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData said of the 2014 password list: “As always, we hope that with more publicity about how risky it is to use weak passwords, more people will start taking simple steps to protect themselves by using stronger passwords and using different passwords for different websites.”

The full list is published below. As security expert David Harley noted in a post on the corresponding list from 2012, there is still the strong inclination towards numeric patterns.

Rank Password Change from 2013 1 123456 - 2 password - 3 12345 ↑17 4 12345678 ↓1 5 qwerty ↓1 6 1234567890 - 7 1234 ↑9 8 baseball NEW 9 dragon NEW 10 football NEW 11 1234567 ↓4 12 monkey ↑5 13 letmein ↑1 14 abc123 ↓9 15 111111 ↓8 16 mustang NEW 17 access NEW 18 shadow - 19 master NEW 20 michael NEW 21 superman NEW 22 696969 NEW 23 123123 ↓12 24 batman NEW 25 trustno1 ↓1

For tips on ensuring your password is up to scratch, be sure to watch the We Live Security video below: