Despite high profile breaches of user information and passwords from LinkedIn and Yahoo in recent years, many business users refuse to create passwords that offer adequate protection against cybercriminals, according to a new study from Preempt. Last year, LinkedIn revealed that email addresses and passwords of more than 164 million users were stolen in a massive hack in 2012. The company had originally reported that only 6.46 million accounts had been compromised. Preempt compared how many passwords compromised in the breach were already known from established password dictionaries. They found that more than 63 million LinkedIn users, representing about 35% of accounts, used previously known passwords. No matter how complex these passwords may have been, they were still weak, because they could be quickly cracked by matching against a wordlist of known or previously used passwords.
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ORIGINAL SOURCE: Tech Republic
