The Safest 4-Digit PIN Used To Be 8068

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The safest 4-digit PIN in the world is no longer 8068. Why? Because researchers told everyone that it was the safest number, now everyone knows.

The safest 4-digit PIN is '8068' — or at least it was, until researchers at Data Genetics told everyone this week. The researchers there went through a set of 3.4 million four-digit personal identification numbers and found "8068" came up only 25 times.
 
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The safest PIN is 1234, because everyone knows not to use it so no does, so no one expects it.
 
So the level of security of a PIN is based upon how many people use it? Right because that's exactly how people get your information/money/etc, they try the PIN they use and if it doesn't work they give up!

A little more disturbing is how they got 3.4 million PINs so they could analyze them. I know they're useless without a user identifier but still.
 
The article doens't say who paid for this research, but I really hope it wasn't a government grant because I would hate to think that I couldn't have afforded a loaf of bread because I the tax was too high at the register. Private sector research, sure, no problem.

A little more disturbing is how they got 3.4 million PINs so they could analyze them. I know they're useless without a user identifier but still.
+1
 
It really depends on how a person tries to crack a pin.

The safest is always going to be the last number that would be checked by any system.
 
I always thought it was a good idea to come up with a good 4 letter word, then use the telephone alphabet system to convert it to a pin. Like 2888 or 8487. :) Guess what those are.
 
Sequentials (including 1234) and repeats (like 0000) must have obviously been used more than 8068... that's kinda frightening, but not suprising.

From a surveillance point of view, 8068 seems pretty poor. You hand is completely ignoring the top row of the keypad, and the bottom row only has one usable digit, so as long as you catch that the only character they hit in the 456 row is '6', then you've only got 4 digits to work with for the following remaining characters. The '0' hardly even counts, if the finger is in the bottom row, it's obviously a 0. So now you just have to observe the sequencing, and you know the middle 2 numbers. Not going to take a rocket scientist to brute force the first and last digit out of 3 possible choices of each.
 
How did they get access to those 3.4 million pin numbers to even check this?
 
"That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard of in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!"

thats amazing I have the same combination on my luggage!
 
I just used the default random pin they gave me when I opened the account. It's impossible to attempt to social engineer it as it has no special meaning whatsoever.
 
The article doens't say who paid for this research, but I really hope it wasn't a government grant because I would hate to think that I couldn't have afforded a loaf of bread because I the tax was too high at the register. Private sector research, sure, no problem.


+1

This isn't a research. This is social engineering.

Yep. Recycled news. The original article doesn't mention metholodogy of testing or anything; in other words it is below that of an academic research paper providing no source information.
 
This kind of study is meaningless since it doesn't take into account cultural preferences for numbers ... in China they love the number 8 (considered very lucky) and hate the number 4 (considered very unlucky) ... I suspect the most common numbers in China would involve multiple 8's and the least common selection would be 4444 ;)
 
A little more disturbing is how they got 3.4 million PINs so they could analyze them. I know they're useless without a user identifier but still.

That was my first thought, "wait, what, how/why are they analysing peoples' pins..."
 
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