Despite a rise in credit card fraud, the most commonly-used PIN is still 1234, with 1111 and 0000 coming in second and third.
  Research has revealed that one in ten codes is so obvious it would take criminals just one attempt to guess it correctly, while more than a quarter of the codes are used so often they can be guessed in fewer than 20 attempts.

  The study from DataGenetics analysed 3.4 million four-digit codes and found that many people use birth years as PINs, making it even easier for hackers to guess a code simply by finding out a person's age from online accounts.

  Research from security experts McAfee has found that 17 per cent of people in Europe have been victims of credit card fraud, at a cost of ?1,076 per person.

  Last year the total cost of credit card fraud in the UK from criminals hacking and cloning cards was ?42.1 million and the total amount of fraud committed through all credit card-related crimes was ?388 million.

  There are 10,000 possible combinations for four-digit PIN codes using 0 to 9.

  DataGenetics used data from previously released password tables and security breaches.

  By combining the password databases, researchers filtered the results to show just four-digit numbers and were able to analyse 3.4 million four-digit passwords.

  They discovered that all of the possible 10,000 combinations - from 0000 to 9999 - were found in the data list.

  The most popular password was 1234, but the amount of times this number occurred 'staggered' the researchers - almost 11 per cent of the 3.4 million passwords were 1234.

  This PIN was also more popular than the 4,200 codes at the bottom of the list combined.

  The next most popular 4-digit PIN was 1111, used more than 6 per cent of times.

  In third place was 0000 at two per cent.

  Data Genetics compiled a list of the top 20 passwords and found that 26.83 per cent of all the passwords in the list could be guessed by attempting these 20 combinations.

  The researchers said: 'Statistically, with 10,000 possible combinations, if passwords were uniformly randomly distributed, we would expect these twenty passwords to account for just 0.2per cent of the total, not the 26.83 per cent encountered.'

  The more popular password selections dominate the frequency tables and the study found that 10 per cent of PINs could be guessed correctly first time.

  More than 20 per cent could be guessed by using just five attempts and statistically, one third of all codes could be guessed by trying just 61 distinct combinations.

  The data found that the least-used code was 8068 with just 25 appearances in 3.4 million - far fewer than random distribution would predict.

  The researchers also noted that many of the high-frequency PINs could be interpreted as years because many began with 19, for example, 1984, 1967 and so on.

  This could be a birth year or anniversary and if a hacker can guess someone's age, or even obtain it through birth records or online accounts, for example, they could make an educated guess at the PIN.

  In fact, every single 19+ combination appeared in the top fifth of the list.

  The majority of PINs in the DataGenetics list began with the number one, which may be due to the popularity of using birth years.

  The numbers zero and two were also popular.

  The research found that the higher the number from 0-9, the lower its frequency at the start of the code.

  A recent study found that a pet's name is the most common online password.

  As many as one in six people uses their pet's name as a password.

  One is six Britons admitted accessing someone else's account by guessing the password, with partners the most common target, followed by exs.

  One in ten people has also guessed a work colleague's password, the study by Google Apps found.

  据英国《每日邮报》8月2日报道，科技顾问公司数据基因（DataGenetics）在对340万个四位密码进行研究后指出，1234仍是人们最常使用的密码组合，比例接近11%。

  根据该项研究，在这340万个四位密码中，尝试一次即被破解的密码高达10%，尝试不到20次就能破解的密码超过了25%。同时，研究人员还发现以19开头的密码出现的频率非常高，其主要原因应该是人们往往喜欢用自己的出生年份作为密码，这也让黑客有了可乘之机，他们只要通过这些人的网上账户查到其年纪，就可以轻易破解密码。

  对于使用0到9这10个数字的四位密码来说，一共有1万种组合。尽管近年来信用卡欺诈案件不断增多，但人们最常用的四位密码仍然是1234，1111和0000分别排在第二位和第三位。此外，数据基因公司还发现了一个比较有趣的规律，1在密码组合中的开头被用到的频率最高，0和2也很受欢迎，数字越大，用在密码开头的概率就越低。

  网络安全软件供应商迈克菲（McAfee的）研究发现，欧洲地区有17%的人曾是信用卡欺诈案的受害者，平均每人因此损失1076英镑。英国去年由于黑客入侵和复制银行卡等犯罪行为所造成的损失为4210万英镑，而与信用卡有关的诈骗犯罪造成的损失则高达3.88亿英镑。

  数据基因公司列出了最常用的前20个常用密码，发现其中26.83%的密码只需经过20次尝试就能破解。“如果密码是随机均匀分布的，在这1万个密码组合之中，这20个密码所占据的比例应该只有0.2%，而不是如此惊人的26.83%，”研究人员介绍说。在被调查的340万个密码中，有10%能在第一次尝试时被破解，有20%能在5次尝试后被破解，有1/3的密码在尝试61次后可以被破解。此外，最不常用的密码组合是8068，仅仅出现了25次。

  一项研究发现，宠物的名字也是网上比较常见的密码，多达1/6的人们会使用他们的宠物名字作为密码，还有1/6的英国人承认自己曾经通过猜测破解过某人的账户密码。Google Apps指出，1/10的人能够破解自己同事的账户密码。