Gawker Media get hacked

Gawker Media had a rough weekend, as websites they owned stopped publishing new content over the weekend after hackers gained access to their servers.

Sites such as Gizmondo and Jezebel published information telling their readers to change passwords – issuing a statement saying “our user databases appear to have been compromised.”

Meanwhile the hackers said that they found more than 1.3 million user names and passwords, although it is still unclear if all the data was decrypted. The hackers embarassed the company by posting the passwords of some of the Gawker staff members and users who used ‘password' as their password.

Gawker issued a “We’re deeply embarrassed by this breach” statement across their websites yesterday afternoon. As an experienced, successful eight year old digital media company many people were surprised that something like this could happen.

On Twitter, one of the bloggers for Jezebel said, “I’d write a post about how we’ve been hacked and can’t publish, but we’ve been hacked and can’t publish.”

The hackers have said that they targeted Gawker out of spite as their publications have been critical of the online message board 4chan – a well known group of skilled hackers who attack websites and individuals online.

The hackers said “You would think a site that likes to mock people, such as Gawker, would have better security and actually have a clue what they are doing. But as we’ve proven, those who think they are beyond our reach aren’t as safe as they would like to think!”

KitGuru says: Well this is a tough lesson to learn for Gawker, the last people you want to piss off are 4Chan.

Become a Patron!