fringe: Gawker Shuts Down After Hackers

[security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>

December 12, 2010
Gawker Shuts Down After Hackers

By BRIAN STELTER

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13gawker.html

Web sites belonging to Gawker Media abruptly stopped publishing on Sunday 
after mischief-making hackers gained access to the company?s servers.

People who had accounts on the flagship Gawker, Gizmodo, Jezebel and the 
company?s other Web sites were told to change their passwords because, it 
said in a statement, ?our user databases appear to have been compromised.? 
Working anonymously, the hackers indicated that they had found more than 
1.3 million user names and passwords, though it was unclear whether all of 
the data had been decrypted.

The hackers published the passwords of some Gawker staff members and 
mockingly identified thousands of users who had listed their password as 
?password.?

?We?re deeply embarrassed by this breach,? Gawker said in a statement that 
was posted across its suite of Web sites Sunday afternoon.

The incident was a black eye for Gawker, an eight-year-old digital media 
company founded by Nick Denton that has grown up in New York.

[..]
_______________________________________________
Dataloss Mailing List (dataloss () datalossdb org)
Archived at http://seclists.org/dataloss/
Unsubscribe at http://datalossdb.org/mailing_list

Learn encryption strategies that manage risk and shore up compliance.
Download Article 1 of CREDANT Technologies' The Essentials Series:
Endpoint Data Encryption That Actually Works
http://credant.com/campaigns/realtime2/gap-LP1/