Botnet Username Frenzy: Are Hackers Getting More Creative or Just Lazy?
Botnets have been busy updating their username and password game. Since 2018, they’ve gone from testing 10-20 combinations per IP to a whopping 50. They’re still not going for brain-busting complexity, though. Eight-character defaults like “password” or “3245gs5662d34” remain crowd favorites for these bots.
Hot Take:
Who knew botnets were such creatures of habit? They’re like your grandma’s casserole recipe – same main ingredients, just a larger portion size over time. These digital troublemakers are turning username and password attempts into a buffet, but still can’t resist the tried-and-true recipe of short and sweet passwords. Who needs password complexity when you can just go with “password” or “123456”? I mean, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
Key Points:
- The average number of username/password attempts per source IP has increased since 2018.
- Password length has mostly remained steady at around eight characters despite a peak in late 2018/early 2019.
- Complex default passwords are frequently targeted due to their widespread use.
- Botnets are evolving by adding more username/password combinations but aren’t necessarily improving complexity.
- The data is based on SSH and telnet honeypot collections over a decade.