Outpost24 Exposes IT Admins Using Default Passwords

Researchers from Outpost24 have identified a concerning trend: thousands of IT administrators are employing predictable and weak passwords to safeguard their companies’ internal networks, jeopardizing confidential data and management systems.

Utilizing specialized software, analysts from Outpost24 examined over 1.8 million account records. It was discerned that over 40,000 of these relied on default passwords, notably the term “admin” or its variants.

“To narrow down our password list to administrator passwords, we searched the statistical data stored in the Threat Compass backend for pages identified as Admin portals. We found a total of 1.8 million passwords recovered in 2023 (January to September),” reports Outpost24.

According to experts, malefactors merely need to employ a basic brute force technique to access managerial accounts. From there, they can manipulate system configurations, security parameters, customer databases, and other internal assets.

Outpost24 has compiled a list of the top 20 vulnerable password combinations:

1. admin
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. 1234
5. Password
6. 123
7. 12345
8. admin123
9. 123456789
10. adminisp
11. demo
12. root
13. 123123
14. admin@123
15. 123456aA@
16. 01031974
17. Admin@123
18. 111111
19. admin1234
20. admin1

Companies are urged to promptly replace unreliable passwords and implement additional security measures, ranging from antivirus software to prohibiting autosave functions in browsers. Otherwise, the negligence of certain employees may lead to extensive incidents.