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Related story: For some weird reason, I memorized the serial key for a very popular software (I must be fifteen then). Even today, I can recite the 25-letter ke
by shubhamjain 8y ago
Related story: For some weird reason, I memorized the serial key for a very popular software (I must be fifteen then). Even today, I can recite the 25-letter key without a hitch. And I have used its first ten letters as a password to one of my accounts. Guess what? The password has been used 4000+ times before [1]. It's hard to digest the fact that there are at least a thousand people in the world who did the same thing.
[1]: https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords
- shawnz 8y agoIs your password "fckgw rhqq2"?
- atm0sphere 8y agoWow. I remember this key too. It's amazing how far we've come from those days..just think, each open chrome tab takes up as much memory as your entire machine had back then.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThat says something just as much about Chrome as it does about "how far we've come"
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shubhamjain 8y agoHoly shit! Now that I have changed the password, can you please tell me how did you guess that?
- LolWolf 8y agoI am also extremely curious! (I did not have this password, but would love to know why it was so common?)
- walrus01 8y agoIt's the first few sections of product key for one of the original warez scene releases of the windows XP Pro gold master ISO.
- pkulak 8y agoI too spent most of my youth re-installing Windows on various machines. :D
- osrec 8y agoI'm only guessing, but this could provide a clue: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3fterm=fckgw-rhqq2-yxrkt-8tg6w-2b7q8&=true https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.urbandictionary.com/define....
- fxfan 8y agoWhat the actual hell. Who even remembers the key? And more importantly why? Why would you install XP once a week to remember it? I'm shocked by this subthread!
- pvg 8y agoIt was the first consumer NT-based Windows, the first with activation and this key, which let you bypass all that, was out before the OS was officially released.
- rjf72 8y ago'Back in the day' regular formats were a pretty good way of maintaining system performance. They still are really but computers being an order of magnitude overpowered for all the tasks 90% of users do makes it less relevant. You'd be surprised how easy it is to memorize long series of digits when you enter them a few times. For instance FCKGW. Who was the president in 2001? You'll now literally never forget those 5 letters.
- psalminen 8y agoThat was the first thing I thought of at the beginning of this thread.
- bluedino 8y agoPopular electronics stores would do a in-store setup of your computer before you left with it. Part of this involved entering the users name and windows key. I probably used the same key to setup over 1000 PC's when I worked there.
- cam_l 8y agoWindows XP..
- ceocoder 8y agoBecause bunch of us memorized fckgw rhqq2 yxrkt 8tg6w 2b7q8 for the very same reason back in early 2000s
- iamgopal 8y ago:)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cheeze 8y agoYup. One of the most famous longer numbers out there.
- lvs 8y agoLol. Warez. It's been a long time.
- johnisgood 8y agoTo some. :P
- moogly 8y agoI preferred the rm233 2prqq ... one myself :)
- lsh 8y agoit's even on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_licensing#Leaked_keys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_licensing#Leaked_keys
- shittyadmin 8y agoIf I recall correctly this image helped make it famous: https://marco.org/2007/06/18/wow-fckgw-has-its-own-wikipedia-mention-flickr https://marco.org/2007/06/18/wow-fckgw-has-its-own-wikipedia...
- shawnz 8y agoSorry to scare you! I didn't think you were still using it. Honestly, it was the first thing that came to mind in terms of "culturally important serial keys"
- ceejayoz 8y agoIt's common enough it's in Urban Dictionary. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fckgw-rhqq2-yxrkt-8tg6w-2b7q8 https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fckgw-rhqq2-...
- giancarlostoro 8y agohttps://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fckgw-rhqq2-yxrkt-8tg6w-2b7q8 https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fckgw-rhqq2-...
- mortenjorck 8y agoI laughed out loud when I saw the sponsored domain registrar links down the page advertising “FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8.travel” and other TLDs.
- winrid 8y ago.com is taken :( https://www.godaddy.com/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&tmskey=&domainToCheck=fckgw-rhqq2-yxrkt-8tg6w-2b7q8.com https://www.godaddy.com/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&tmske...
- kkarakk 8y agoIt's also got some kinda german meme on it
- fouc 8y agoSo apropos
- Corrado 8y ago.dev is not taken (yet). I think this might be one of the best uses for a joke .dev domain. :) https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=fckgw-rhqq2-yxrkt-8tg6w-2b7q8.dev&hl=en https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=fck...
- atulmadhugiri 8y agoIt's a pretty well-known leaked key. And then you said exactly what part of it you used. Not the smartest move. It's like saying "My password is the first 10 characters of a really popular book about wizards" and expecting no one to figure it out.
- shubhamjain 8y agoI didn't know the well-known part. Besides, I was assuming that this was only of the multiple, multiple keys. But, it's funny how popular it is, and that so many had a reason to memorize it.
- kakarot 8y agoEven if you've provided information which narrows your password down to ~5,000 possible values, you've effectively handed out your password to one of 5,000 internet strangers whom you will never meet in real life. Then consider that this is Hacker News, and how many of those 5,000 have both the skills and motivation to exploit the information you've provided. Never give out "hints" about your password. Not its contents, not its exact length, the physical location in which you store a copy, nothing.
- Dylan16807 8y agoIf giving out the length hurts anything, there's enough going wrong that you should probably assume it's already compromised. Unless there's something fundamentally wrong with the password, a public length of n is almost as secure as a secret length of n, and significantly more secure than a secret length of n-1 Never get into the specifics of a password, but explaining the basic structure should be a tiny impact and well within your margin of safety, or you didn't make a good enough password to start with.
- kakarot 8y agoI'm willing to believe that if you could help me understand a bit more why that is so.
- cesarb 8y agoIt's probably the most famous software license key, it can even be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_licensing#Leaked_keys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_licensing#Leaked_keys
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rb808 8y agoIts even in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_licensing#Leaked_keys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_licensing#Leaked_keys
- rangibaby 8y agoI guess Win XP would be one of the world's most pirated software (ever?)
- whatAsurprise 8y agoA dubious distinction. It's use probably lasted 10 years, and it's now obsolete. So, what does the "piracy" aspect matter now? In retrospect, it just got copied onto hard drives a lot. Big deal.
- whatAsurprise 8y agoThe most surprising part of this exchange is your expression of surprise. Come on, dude. You fucking told us what you use.
- Double_a_92 8y agoYou said you were 15 and it was a very popular software that needed to be installed relatively often. I guess people on here are 30-ish, so it happened 15 years ago in the 00s. This hints strongly towards WinXP, which has a few famous leaked Serials.
- I_complete_me 8y agoWhatever way you phrased this I feel Sherlock Homes mode is happening here. And the following is tangential to the OPs headline so it may or may not be interesting to HN folk. Last week in my local paper the daily quiz asked what is the common name for "Galanthus nivalis". To my younger self it would have seemed impossible, but now that I am older and more informed (though NOT smarter) I spotted the 'gala' at the start. Hmmm. The word 'galaxy' starts with 'gala'. I remember that galaxy and milky way are somehow related. Milk is white. What flower (given it is Spring here in Northern Europe) could be white (-ish?). Aha, snowdrop! And to me (seriously) I felt utter astonishment that I was right. I am not smart. But this machine that I seem to have could do that. Well, wow to the maker that did that.
- agumonkey 8y agodgk7b 9rwyw bound by the power of cerealz
- shittyadmin 8y agoWhat's this from? I have definitely seen it before but I can't put my finger on it and a quick search doesn't turn it up like the others on here - VLK for more recent version of Windows perhaps?
- agumonkey 8y agoI... am not even sure. 2K license most probably.
- amingilani 8y agoSimilarly, I was guessing "QW4HD DQCRG" I've seen the above but for some reason mine was more prevalent in my region. Common enough that even my friends could recite it.
- userbinator 8y agoI was going to guess W7XTC 2YWFB... another semi-well-known key from a slightly earlier era.
- haldean 8y agoMy guess was going to be 09 f9 11 02 9b
- james_s_tayler 8y agoYou're thinking of windows XP
- dpacmittal 8y agoI remember this key. Lol.
- highmastdon 8y agoWe need an XKCD for this!
- thaumasiotes 8y agoI memorized my first library card number -- the library would call and leave a message containing the number when a book came in. 1000102772901. I had to replace the card a few times, but only the first number stuck.
- 83457 8y agoSame thing with my first debit card. All the rest never stuck
- gdy 8y agoYep. I remember the big eyes of a bank clerk after she asked me to fill in some form regarding my card and I wrote the number without looking at the card.
- hadlock 8y agoI memorized my 16-digit library card, but on because it was the password required to access library dial-in unix computer system, which allowed some minor read/write access to the disk, but more importantly, unrestricted access to the internet via lynx, which was, for reasons unknown to me at that age, way faster than the AOL browser with image support.
- inopinatus 8y agoWord of warning, if you use an ad/content blocker like uBlock Origin, and block 3rd-party JS, then HIBP may give up on its k-anonymity mechanism and just sends your password to their server in cleartext. Ensure you specifically permit loading jQuery from cloudflare.com, and check network traffic using a test password first.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cheeze 8y agoWhy does this happen? It seems like a huge oversight to not detect ad blockers and let the user know that their password is being transmitted in plaintext if that's true...
- morpheuskafka 8y agoIt's not cleartext if you're loading over HTTPS which is enforced on this site.
- AlexITC 8y agoI'm still impressed by the number of technical people that are willing to give you their passwords by a way or another, a common way being when they are offered to check if his password has been leaked. Once a friend shared with me one of those services, he got surprised when I raised my concern about compromising his password, he took a second to check the developer tools to see if there was any request including his password, there wasn't, so he called me crazy (it's well known that malicious sites behave differently on certain conditions, one is having the developer tools opened). Anyway, I suppose that this blind trust is what makes phishing attacks so effective.
- morganvachon 8y agoI've done the same, though I never used it as a password. Back around 2000 or so I was experimenting a lot with hardware configurations and I had input my Windows 98 SE key so many times during reinstalls I ended up memorizing it unintentionally. Even today, nearly 20 years later, I can recall it perfectly. It actually came in handy a couple of years ago when I built a P-III retro gaming machine out of scavenged parts; I found a Windows 98 CD at work collecting dust on a shelf, installed it, and instinctively entered the correct key without missing a character.
- saltyshake 8y agoI did the same, mine was qqwd7...
- xaduha 8y ago> for a very popular software You aren't fooling no one, might as well just say it.
- pishpash 8y agoNever use a shared secret. Generate your own entropy.
- Waterluvian 8y agoSame. FCKGW-RHQQ2...
- cm2012 8y agoI'm surprised my burner password I use for throwaway sites hasn't been compromised.
- Moru 8y agoWell, now it has since you typed it into a search engine :-)
- nyolfen 8y agolol, when i was 9 or 10 i memorized 'the big cheat' for turok 64, which i can also recite today -- nthgthdgdcrtdtrk turns out 204 other people can too! (though apparently not in all caps) never used it as a password but i can see why one would
- AlexITC 8y agoI remember to have memorized a couple of Windows serials, the reason that the Windows serial was used as a password by thousands of users might be related that some people didn't understood that they needed a new password and just typed the serial thinking that was the required one, or to non-English speakers, they could have misunderstood what was required.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoOr just that after spending too many times installing pirated Windows for yourself, your friends and family, the number stuck to their memory. There's a whole spectrum of people between computer professionals like us and the computer-clueless people; some of them know enough to have served as front-line tech support for their family, but not enough to not use what's possibly the widest-known CD-key as a password :).
- taneq 8y agoYou're one in 7.5 million!
- SmallDeadGuy 8y agoBeing the "techy" kid in a 7 person family meant I was responsible for setting up any new devices on our wifi many many years ago. From the number of phones/consoles/laptops set up on the same WEP key, I have the 26 digit random hex string permanently ingrained in my memory. While I don't use it as a password any more, before password managers I'm pretty sure I had one of if not _the_ most secure banking password at the time.
- ttsda 8y agoMy bank still has a mandatory fixed 8 numerical digit password, with 3 digit positions asked for login, and "two-factor" SMS confirmation for transfers. Very secure.
- usmanshaikh06 8y agoi think you are talking about the most used windows xp product key "QW4HD DQCRG HM64M 6GJRK 8K83T"
- zamadatix 8y ago(key redacted as I realized they are still selling SC4 Deluxe on Steam. It was your standard 5 groups of 4 alphanumeric key) When I was a kid I didn't understand why Sim City 4 Deluxe played after install but didn't play when I stuck disk 2 back in and clicked the game. It was my favorite game for a number of years and it wasn't until at least 2 or 3 years in I realized it wanted me to stick disk 1 in for the copyright protection and that disk 2 just worked during install for convenience reasons. I had been uninstalling the game every night before I went to bed (preserving saves!) and reinstalling it every day after school. One day I couldn't find the case with the key (probably got thrown away) and I thought I was going to have to buy it again but when I went to the computer I was able to get it first guess. Been 15 years now. I suppose I'm never going to forget that key.
- chaoticmass 8y agoI have an old password I made up back when I was 13 that I still remember. Nothing complicated, and it only used 1,3,5,7, and 9 (four corners of the numpad and the center key). 9 digits length. I made it up because it was easy to key in. I went and checked and was surprised there had been no pwnage.