Gawker Media, one of the web’s largest publishers running sites like Gawker.com and Gizmodo.com, has been hacked. The insides of the multiple websites within their portfolio, their 1.3 million user names, e-mail addresses and passwords, are now splayed all across the Internet for anyone to see. All the data was uploaded to the bit torrent file sharing network late Sunday afternoon, meaning anyone from Dallas to Dbruvnik to Djibouti can have a look.
The PBS NewsHour has learned that a select sub-list of what appear to be e-mail addresses and passwords of employees from federal, state and local government agencies were parsed separately for potential future attacks. They may have been used as part of Operation Payback, or another one of the initiatives launched by the so-called “Anonymous” cyber movement that has grown in scope since the release of secret documents by the web site WikiLeaks.
The fact that the list has now been made public may give government agencies and individuals a chance to change their password information and diminish the damage.
