Names of bands and artists like “blink182”, “metallica”, “slipknot”, “eminem” and “nirvana” are among the top 100,000 commonly-breached passwords in the “global password risk list” released by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the United Kingdom. 

The passwords in the list are already known to hackers and the people who use them are at serious risk of undermining their cyber security by enabling hackers to easily gain access to their cyber data. Other commonly used passwords include the likes of “12345678”, “password” and “qwerty”.

In the statement released by the NCSC, Dr Ian Levy, NCSC Technical Director, said, “Password re-use is a major risk that can be avoided - nobody should protect sensitive data with something that can be guessed, like their first name, local football team or favourite band.”

“Using hard-to-guess passwords is a strong first step and we recommend combining three random but memorable words. Be creative and use words memorable to you, so people can’t guess your password.”, advised Dr Levy. 

Interestingly, Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 has responded to the fact that the band name is among the most-hacked passwords. Simply captioning it “you guys.”, the bassist shared a screenshot of CNN’s tweet regarding the list. 

If you would like to learn more about the global password risk list, click here. Alternatively, you can also view/download the list here.