Ashley Madison Hack Update: Hack Reveals Members’ Horrible Passwords

By Cheri Cheng - 14 Sep '15 12:45PM
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Cheaters are not very creative.

The data that continues to unfold from the Ashley Madison hack scandal revealed that users of the website, which encourages married and committed people to engage in affairs, did not make strong passwords.

CynoSure Prime a group of people who crack passwords as a hobby, claimed that they have cracked at least 11 million passwords over a time span of ten days despite the website's claims of using a strong algorithm that was supposed to encrypt passwords.

The group reported that the top five passwords that were used on the website were 123456 (the most popular), 12345, 123456789, password and DEFAULT. Finding out that the password 123456 was the most popular was not much of a shock. Several surveys conducted over the years have also reported that this particular number sequence was a very popular password.

For more information on the hack and how the hobbyists decoded the passwords, visit Arstechnica.com.

The Ashley Madison security breach has affected more than 30 million lives. The website was hacked into in mid-July. Despite the hackers' threat to release information if the website was not taken down, Avid Life Media did not acquiesce to their demands.

In August, the hackers, known as the Impact Team, uploaded the information on the Internet. The data dump included names, emails, credit card information, addresses, personal fantasies and more.

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