DEFAULT_PWD$, How and Why

What is Default Password?

Default passwords are predefined users who has the default password stored in a table called SYS.DEFAULT_PWD$.

In other words, any user who is listed in SYS.DEFAULT_PWD$ is a predefined user, it has the chance to set its password as the default one, even though the user could have not been created yet.

Table SYS.DEFAULT_PWD$ stores usernames and their own default passwords natively in the database. Which means, some users may not exist in your database, but once they have been created, they already have the default password defined in the table.

If an existing user who is using the default password, this makes its account status bit be 16 or larger defined in USER_ASTATUS_MAP.

Who are Predefined Users?

We may query the table to get a list of default usernames predefined by Oracle database.

As you can see, there're 1210 usernames listed, which have the default password for the database to recognize.

According to the list, USER1, USER2, USER3, USER4, etc. who are very commonly used names in technology are also default usernames for an Oracle database.

All I can say is that if we don't look up the table, we will never know.

Who are Using Default Password?

To know who are using the default password currently, you may check this post: DBA_USERS_WITH_DEFPWD, How and Why.