No, that’s not the password for the giant oxygen door on the planet Druidia, nor is it the combination to President Scroob’s luggage. But it’s close!

In the Mel Brook’s movie SpaceBalls, the combination to the oxygen door (and the luggage) is 12345. It’s probably the default password, set by the manufacturer I’m guessing. Turns out it’s very close to perhaps the most common computer password ever, which is 123456.

There’s a study out from Imperva which analyzed 32,000,000 computer passwords. These were passwords that the Bad Guys had discovered during various security breaches. You can read the details of the study in a report from net-security.org here.

This is the list of the top 10 passwords the Bad Guys cracked:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

Yes, those were real passwords, used quite a bit, to protect information such a credit card transactions, financial records, and other personal information on the Internet. I suppose the person thinking that 123456 was a great password might have been really proud of themselves.

I’ve written about passwords many times in this blog, so I won’t repeat myself here. Instead, I’ll cough up the relevant links:

The Strong Password Thing, originally posted May 14, 2008. It contains a link to the Microsoft Password Checker service.

A Password to Remember, originally posted January 23, 2009.

The bottom line is the same: Use a strong password that you won’t forget. Or if you plan on forgetting the password (as I do), then write it down. Write it somewhere inconspicuous, such as in a phone book, recipe file, or inside the back cover of your favorite computer book.

And by all means, avoid using 123456 as your password!