QCOSTARICA – The password that Costa Rica President Carlos Alvarado used on one of the cell phones that was seized by the Fiscalia (Prosecutor’s Office) and the OIJ (Judicial Agency), is one of the most insecure in the world.
“123456” was revealed on Wednesday during Alvarado’ss appearance before the investigative legislative commission into the Presidential Data Analysis Unit (UPAD), a data analysis unit created by the President, with the aim of helping him make decisions, however, it was dismantled when it became known that the organization handled confidential data of Costa Ricans.
For these events, the prosecution raided the Presidential House and the president himself is investigated for abuse of power and prevarication, among other crimes.
The password was made public by legislator Dragos Dolanescu, an ardent opposition to Carlos Alvarado and who warned the president before the questioning that “I’m going to be very hard on you today.”
Dolanescu denied that the information was given to him by the prosecutor’s office.
The legislator’s direct questioning was prompted by the president’s public statement a year ago that he did not remember the password to one of the seized cell phones.
One of the most insecure passwords in the world
The password “123456” is part of the blacklist published by the Center for National Cybersecurity (NCSC), a UK government agency charged with preventing and combating cybercrime, the BBC reported last year.
According to ZDnet.com, one out of every 142 passwords is ‘123456’, a password spotted 7 million times across a data trove of one billion leaked credentials, in one of the biggest password re-use studies of its kind carried out in June 2020.
The computer threat detection company, Eset, also did an analysis in which it detected the most frequent passwords worldwide.
According to the results of the analysis of some 500 million passwords that were leaked in various data breaches throughout 2019, “12345”, “123456” and “123456789” are the most used.
The top 10 most common passwords:
- 123456
- 123456789
- picture1
- password
- 12345678
- 111111
- 123123
- 12345
- 1234567890
- senha
