Password ji32k7au4a83 is not secure, it has suffered as many as 141 breaches and many users have been scammed. Here’s how to defend yourself.
In a world full of viruses, Trojans, phishing, threats and cyber leaks increasing the effectiveness and complexity of passwords proves to be crucial. While many users simply choose their date of birth followed by the initials of their first and last name, others go to great lengths and come up with long and complex security keys.
In this context, you might think that the password ji32k7au4a83 would be the ultimate in security, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Choosing this sequence of numbers and letters is tantamount to putting your data in the hands of hackers. It proves to be especially dangerous if you set it to protect your email inbox. This is what has been revealed by the Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) platform. The reason is that the sequence can be traced back to a specific language, so it is extremely easy to discover and hack.
Why is the password ji32k7au4a83 not secure?
Have I Been Pwned is a portal that collects stolen passwords from data breaches and lets users know if their inbox has been subjected to an external attack. Among the functions of the system, there is one that allows people to evaluate the effectiveness of their passwords. Through the study of the data processed by the portal, Dr. Robert Ou realized that “ji32k7au4a83” is among the least secure sequences. In fact, it has been forced 141 times. The engineer warned users through a post on Twitter, asking followers why there were so many violations. Many responded to Ou’s invitation, referring to the so-called Zhuyin Fuhao writing system. In fact, the sequence ji32k7au4a83 is a transposition of letters and numbers that translates as “my password” in Mandarin Chinese.
To understand how it works, one must type the sequence on the Zhuyin keyboard, which is mainly used in Taiwan for transliteration from standard Chinese. The keys represent the letters of the Latin alphabet but the characters produced in the monitor are in Mandarin.
With the sequence ji3 you get the Chinese symbol for M. Continuing with the typing of 2k7 you add Y; with au4 you get PASS, and finally with a83 you end up with WORD. So, the seemingly meaningless password actually has a fairly obvious and predictable meaning, which many hackers have learned to intercept and exploit.
A lesson learned by many users
Following the alarm raised by Robert Ou, many users – from Taiwan and beyond – have changed their passwords choosing a sequence unrelated to meanings and translations. Many have followed HIBP’s advice to increase password effectiveness in three steps: rely on a single system to record and protect all passwords used to access sites, leverage two-factor authentication and enable notifications for new device logins.