Ninety per cent of office staff give away password for a biro

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 17 Apr 2003 at 12:41

A survey by Infosecurity Europe 2003 has found that 90 per cent of those questioned at Waterloo station offered up their password at the prospect of a pen.

The keys to your company's network and data mean little to today's office worker, revealed the survey. Seventy-five per cent of those questioned immediately proffered their password, and a further 15 per cent revealing it after two further questions.

And those two further 'killer' questions? 'What category does your password fall under?' such as 'My name' or 'My car' and a further qualifying question, such as 'What is your name?'.

One interviewee said, 'I am the CEO, I will not give you my password. It could compromise my company's information'. He then said that his password was his daughter's name. 'What is your daughter's name?' was the interviewer's cheeky retort. He replied, 'Tasmin'.

This form of security breach is not new to the criminal world, and a call from someone claiming to be from systems with a request for a password is a well-known and practiced ruse.

Last year, 65 per cent of those surveyed gave away their password, but with a year of war, terrorism and hacking behind us, security is clearly no longer an issue.

Of those passwords kindly donated, the most popular was 'password', with 12 per cent. That means that one in eight of us use this and not necessarily just for work. Two thirds of those questioned used the same password for everything - including online banking and home computing.

Virus writers are now so confident of the pathetic password policy of most of us that worms such a W32/Deloder uses a list of less than 100 passwords as its main weapon for opening up systems.