TAKE YOUR QUIZ ON PASSWORD SECURITY?

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That figure comes from a 2017 data-breach investigations report by Verizon Communications.

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Common phrases aren’t safe, yet the usual suspects variations on “password,” “letmein” and “iloveyou” are still in heavy rotation. 
 
A common word in an uncommon language is still a common word, just in an uncommon language. According to Dr. Cranor, it doesn’t bring add any security. “People think they’re really clever, they’re like, ‘Oooh, I did it in Swahili.’ But it still says, ‘I love you.’ ”   

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Dr. Cranor says many people assume that if they use personal information, such as a favorite song, sports team or movie, their password is safe because criminals don’t know them. But that isn’t how hackers work, she says. 

“Many password attacks occur with attackers guessing billions of passwords,” she says. “They don’t know anything about you, but they have an algorithm that guesses things, so if your password is a common song, it’s going to be guessed.”  

As for keyboard patterns, she says literally every one of them is in every password-hacking dictionary.  

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In a typical password manager, you use one password to access all of your other passwords, which are encrypted. That works well, as long as you make the master password a really good one that was created by a password generator. 

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Dr. Cranor says that you can use the same password for accounts that you really don’t care about and that can’t be used to gain access to other accounts. “Other than that,” she says, “you should really have a separate password for everything.”

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This password, based on an order available from Katz’s Delicatessen in New York, uses both numbers and characters, which is recommended, and avoids simply tacking the numbers onto the end, which criminals have figured out, Dr. Cranor says. She also suggests avoiding passwords that are too complicated. “The downside of EyeLuvKatzs3MeatPlatter!WithAllPastrami,” Dr. Cranor says, “is that it is probably difficult to both remember and type.” 

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MFA primarily prevents any attack that results from a bad actor obtaining or guessing the user’s credentials. This can include a wide range of cyberattacks, though most commonly this encompasses phishing/spear-phishing attacks, automated credential stuffing, and guessing attacks. Microsoft’s analysis has determined that 99% of account compromises can be blocked with MFA.