With characteristic humor, Gawker writer Adrian Chen dubbed last night ‘The Night All of the Internet Changed Their Passwords.’ What happened to inspire such a sweeping password reset? Gawker Media’s database, which contained private emails, passwords, and source code for the Gawker family of websites, was hacked by a group of hackers called Gnosis. Their crime? Simple hubris, apparently.
“We went after Gawker because of their outright arrogance,” said a member of Gnosis. “We have had access to all of their emails for a long time as well as most of their infrastructure powering the site. Gawkmedia has possibly the worst security I have ever seen. It is scary how poor it is.”
Well, I imagine that when Gawker comes back up, security will be much better. Gawker seems to learn something from every issue they have, from hackings to commenter issues to bloggers getting arrested for crimes against Apple. Maybe this will allow Gawker to finally make the leap to more stable, easier-to-use CMS software.
Tags: Gawker, Gnosis, Gawker hacked, Gawker database compromised, change Gawker passwords, Gawker website hacked, Adrian Chen, Gawker website information stolen, hackers, computer security, cybercrime