Microsoft Joins Fight Against Password Attacks

A new project by Microsoft aims to monitor attacks that computer users might encounter daily when using their passwords.

Microsoft released vital data collected from an FTP-server which shows that hackers continue to focus on passwords with an average length of eight characters with "password" and "123456" being the most used.

Most of the hackers attempted to log into the administrator account on English and French computers. "Administrator" and "Administrateur" came up as the two most popular usernames, using a variety of passwords.

Researchers from Microsoft's Malware Protection Center blog wrote: "You should take care of what user name and password you're choosing. If your account has no limit on the number of login attempts, then knowing the user name is like having half the job done."

In one case, an attacker made more than 400 000 attempts to guess a user name password combination. The most common passwords were the following:

1. password
2. 123456
3. #!comment:
4. changeme

Microsoft recommended that users create passwords consisting of numbers, letters and special characters using a combination of lower and upper case.

The average length of password attacks was eight characters, so users should focus on longer passwords, the researchers warned.

Hackers use a variety of methods to steal log-in and password details, the most common method is using computer viruses which contain a Smart Keystroke Recorder.