Password alert! Don’t use 1234 and username admin

I spotted an article titled Too many default ‘admin1234’ passwords increase risk for industrial systems, research finds which caught my attention.

Actors will try this combo before anything else.

While I’ve been on voice mail systems from around the country, they definitely don’t use passwords like 1234 as far as I can remember. They either use a box number or a random set of 4 characters as primary.

According to the first paragraph:

Easily guessed default passwords can be a malicious hackers’ easiest way to infiltrate a target. And all too often, according to research released Wednesday, operators of critical infrastructure companies aren’t updating off-the-shelf security credentials in internet devices connected to industrial systems.

While the article may be outdated, the content of it may still hold true whether we are talking about critical infrastructure or something else.

There may be plenty of linked material in this, so I’m not going to heavily link, or quote.

If you sell stuff, you might want to make sure if it contains passwords, you clearly have instructions somewhere on changing it once the user logs in to it for the first time.