'12345' the most popular phished Hotmail password

The phishing attack that exposed the details of 10,000 Hotmail users has revealed that 12345 was the most popular password of those caught out, according to a security researcher.

That's alarming news given the glut of information and warnings that pepper the internet, especially given the fact that the second most popular password was 123456789.

The information was revealed by security research Bogdan Calin on his blog. Calin reviewed the list of 10,000 Hotmail accounts posted on PasteBin by hackers and discovered that of the 9,843 valid passwords, 82 of them used one of these two numbers.

Also popular, and equally weak, were the passwords 12345678, 1234567 and 111111 - which all featured in the top ten.

The rest of the top ten was filled out with names such as alejandra, alberto, and alejandro, leading Calin to suspect that the phishing kit was targeting Latinos.

Another interesting fact to be pulled from his research was the longest password, which came in at a staggering 30 characters and was "lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo". The shortest password, on the other hand, was only one character long.

In general, Calin found that the majority of the passwords were between six and nine characters long, with the average password eight characters in length.

Hotmail users weren't the only ones caught out by the phishers, with GMail, Yahoo and AOL also reporting that their users have been targeted.