Superman? Spider-Man? Hello Kitty? Study reveals most hackable pop-culture password

A new study has revealed the most dangerous (ie: hackable) pop-culture passwords to have, and comic book superheroes rank high.

The study, which was carried out by Mailsuite, analysed 300 million hacked accounts, and identified the passwords with references to pop-culture you should be avoiding.

So, which one is the most dangerous?

Turns out the Man of Steel himself, as ‘Superman’ is the most hackable password. The DC superhero showed up in 584,697 data breaches.

The second spot went to rock band Blink-182, appearing in 482,244 breaches, while bronze goes to Superman’s DC neighbour Batman, with 352,422. Bruce Wayne can’t be too thrilled about that.

Scroll down for the full list.

For those of you keeping count and care about these sort of things, DC is winning, as Marvel doesn’t make an appearance until ninth place, with Spider-Man just making it into the top ten with 253,179 breaches.

“Unfortunately, hackers are all too aware of humanity’s reliance on unsafe password practices,” Mailsuite said. “One in four people reuse the same password across more than eleven sites and apps, meaning a hacker gaining access to one account can quickly gain access to the rest in a domino effect.”

Here are the Top 25 most hackable pop-culture reference passwords:

1. Superman

2. Blink-182

3. Batman

4. Star Wars

5. Eminem

6. 50 Cent

7. Metallica

8. Slipknot

9. Spider-Man

10. Minecraft

11. Hello Kitty

12. Barbie

13. New York Yankees

14. Green Day

15. Slayer

16. Flo Rida

17. Pantera

18. Warcraft

19. Linkin Park

20. Boston Red Sox

21. Rammstein

22. Harry Potter

23. Avatar

24. Terminator

25. Pikachu

When it comes to actors, you may have noticed that they don’t even trouble the Top 25 pop culture passwords.

Zac Efron leads the list as the most commonly used password, followed by Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp. Rather depressingly, only one woman makes the top 10: Emma Watson, in fourth place.

Here are the top 10 actors’ names used as passwords, as found in data breaches:

1. Zac Efron

2. Brad Pitt

3. Johnny Depp

4. Emma Watson

5. Al Pacino

6. Will Smith

7. Jared Leto

8. Vin Diesel

9. Tom Cruise

10. Jackie Chan

So, what is to be done if you're wedded to the idea of including some pop culture into your passwords? Well, avoid these for a start. Maybe get more obscure. And as an added bonus, Mailsuite advises users to avoid personalising.

“Over a third of people include personal information in their passwords,” they explained. “So all a hacker needs to do to crack the code is scour social media feeds for clues.”