Gawker Media Sites’ Passwords Hacked

December 13th, 2010

Computer Security Today I received two random emails telling me that my password credentials had been hacked for the Gawker Media sites, including lifehacker.com, a primary source for Chad’s News articles, as well as gawker.com, gizmodo.com, io9.com, jalopnik.com, jezebel.com, kotaku.com, deadspin.com, and fleshbot.com. At first I though this was a rather obvious spam/hack attempt, but after some quick research I learned that the Gawker Media database had indeed been hacked, and that my login credentials (username, email address, and password) have been posted to the web. Since this is a password I use extensively for non-critical logins, I’m going to have to change it for something nearing a hundred web sites. Note that the compromised passwords were encrypted, but that the encryption scheme is fairly easy to break.