A new study from NordPass has revealed that all 10 of the most popular passwords in Switzerland can be cracked in less than a second. Cyber security experts, look away now…

People in Switzerland still bad at creating passwords

While it can feel as though the practice of adding special characters, numbers and capital letters in our passwords has been drilled into the modern psyche, new data released by NordPass suggests that many in Switzerland still haven’t got the memo. 

As part of the study, NordPass analysed the most common passwords people use on the internet. The results hardly offer Fort Knox levels of protection.

123456 the most common password in Switzerland

As of 2024, 123456 is the most common password in Switzerland. This was followed by the horizontal typing code qwerty with 123 added as an extra razor-thin layer of security. Qwerty1, 123456789 and Abcd1234 rounded out the top four, to the delight of hackers everywhere.

In fact, NordPass estimated that it would take those in the know less than a second to crack all but two of the 20 most popular passcodes in the alpine nation. The exceptions are Qwerty1! in 20th, where hackers would take two seconds to see through the exclamation point, and qwertzuiop in 18th, where it would take them seven minutes to deduce that the user went from one side of their keyboard to another, but had it on the German setting.

Password etiquette declines worldwide

"The list of the most popular passwords shows once again that users' password habits still leave a lot to be desired," NordPass wrote, adding that more than half of passwords analysed were simple combinations of numbers and letters. Globally, the top passwords were 123456, 123456789 and 12345678.

The phenomenon also appears to be getting worse: according to NordPass, as of 2024 78 percent of the world’s top passwords can be cracked in less than a second, an 8 percentage point increase compared to 2023. They blamed this rise on the fact that people have too many passwords to remember, estimating that on average a single person has 168 personal logins and 87 logins for work.

What should a good password look like?

According to the Swiss Federal Office for Cyber Security, all passwords should be at least 12 characters long, and contain a mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers and special characters. It should also not feature any known words and be as unique as possible. 

Naturally, if your password is on the list below, change it as soon as possible.

10 most common passwords in Switzerland

In all, here are the most common password phrases in Switzerland for 2024:

1. 123456
2. qwerty123
3. qwerty1
4. 123456789
5. Abcd1234
6. 12345678
7. password
8. 12345
9. 1234567
10. 1234567890

For more information, and to see which other passwords made the top in each country, check out the NordPass website.