Why the Chinese Phonetic Password ‘ji32k7au4a83’ Shows Up 141 Times

Earlier reports highlighted that over 500 000 leaked password lists revealed nearly 3% of users still used the trivial password “123456”. A recent discussion on the breach‑tracking site Have I Been Pwned focused on a far less obvious password: “ji32k7au4a83”.

Have I Been Pwned and the Pwned Passwords Dataset

Have I Been Pwned provides a service called Pwned Passwords, which aggregates 551 509 767 real passwords exposed in data breaches. Users can query how many times a particular password has appeared. For example, the infamous “123456” was found 23 174 662 times.

The Curious Case of “ji32k7au4a83”

Hardware/software engineer Robert Ou noticed that the password “ji32k7au4a83” appeared 141 times in the Pwned Passwords list, which seemed unusually high for such a random‑looking string. Community members soon identified the reason: the string is a phonetic transcription of the Chinese phrase “我的密码” (wǒ de mìmǎ, meaning “my password”) using the Zhuyin (注音符号) system.

Background on Zhuyin (Bopomofo)

Zhuyin, also known as Bopomofo, is a phonetic notation system for Mandarin Chinese. It was based on the phonetic alphabet created by Zhang Taiyan, formalized by the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Committee in 1913, and officially promulgated by the Beiyang Government’s Ministry of Education in 1918.

The original 1918 version consisted of three groups:

Initials (声母)

Medials (介音)

Finals (韵母)

One of the early charts listed the symbols as follows:

ㄍㄎㄫㄐㄑㄬㄉㄊㄋㄅㄆㄇㄈㄪㄗㄘㄙㄓㄔㄕㄏㄒㄌㄖ
ㄧㄨㄩ
ㄚㄛㄝㄟㄞㄠㄡㄢㄤㄣㄥㄦ

Over more than a century, Zhuyin has evolved, but it remains in use today in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu for teaching Mandarin pronunciation.

Practical Password‑Creation Advice

Security experts recommend the following three principles for strong passwords:

Use a length of at least eight characters.

Avoid obvious patterns or predictable sequences.

Include at least three character types, such as letters, numbers, and special symbols.

Attackers often compile “common password” lists from observed user habits and can crack thousands of accounts in minutes; studies show that about 1,000 accounts can be compromised in roughly 17 minutes using such lists.