Over 40,000 admin portal accounts use 'admin' as a password

Security researchers found that IT administrators are using tens of thousands of weak passwords to protect access to portals, leaving the door open to cyberattacks on enterprise networks.

Out of more than 1.8 million administrator credentials analyzed, over 40,000 entries were “admin,” showing that the default password is widely accepted by IT administrators.

Default and weak passwords

The authentication data was collected between January and September this year through Threat Compass, a threat intelligence solution from cybersecurity company Outpost24.

Outpost24 says that the authentication credentials come from information-stealing malware, which typically targets applications that store usernames and passwords.

Although the collected data was not in plain text, the researchers say that “most of the passwords in our list could have been easily guessed in a rather unsophisticated password-guessing attack.”

Depending on its purpose, an admin portal could provide access related to configuration, accounts, and security settings. It could also allow tracking customers and orders, or provide a means for create, read, update, delete (CRUD) operations for databases.

After analyzing the collection of authentication credentials for admin portals, Outpost24 created a top 20 of the weakest authentication credentials:

01.	admin	11.	demo
02.	123456	12.	root
03.	12345678	13.	123123
04.	1234	14.	admin@123
05.	Password	15.	123456aA@
06.	123	16.	01031974
07.	12345	17.	Admin@123
08.	admin123	18.	111111
09.	123456789	19.	admin1234
10.	adminisp	20.	admin1

The researchers warn that although the entries above are “limited to known and predictable passwords,” they are associated with admin portals, and threat actors are targeting privileged users.

Defending the enterprise network starts with applying baseline security principles like using long, strong, and unique passwords for every account, especially for users with access to sensitive resources.

To keep safe from info-stealing malware, Outpost24 recommends using an endpoint and detection response solution, disabling password saving and auto-fill options in web browsers, checking domains when a redirection occurs, and steering away from cracked software.