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1,464 Western Australian government officials used ‘Password123’ as their password. But don’t smirk.

Posted on August 26, 2018 by Dissent

Taylor Telford reports:

Somewhere in Western Australia, a government IT employee is probably laughing or crying or pulling their hair out, or maybe all of the above. A security audit of the Western Australian government released this week by the state’s auditor general found that 26 percent of its officials had weak, common passwords — including more than 5,000 including the word “password” out of 234,000 in 17 government agencies.

The legions of lazy passwords were exactly what you — or a thrilled hacker — would expect: 1,464 people went for “Password123” and 813 used “password1.” Nearly 200 individuals simply used “password,” perhaps never changing it to begin with. Almost 13,000 used variations of the date and season, and almost 7,000 included versions of “123

Read more on TBO.

Category: Commentaries and AnalysesNon-U.S.

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