Password Insecurity: An Analysis of Gawker User Passwords

December 15, 2010

An analysis by the Wall Street Journal of the stolen user data from Gawker media proves that many users don't take password security very seriously. At all. That data was swiped over the weekend by a hacking group called "Gnosis," who managed to gain access to e-mail addresses and passwords of more than a million Gawker users.

Gawker's sites have been compromised, causing users to reset their passwords to sites such as Lifehacker, Gawker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, and Jezebel. The Wall Street Journal analyzed some of the hacked Gawker data that has been released to find trends in people's password selections. They looked at a sample of 188,279 passwords made public by the group. The list proved that a lot of users chose passwords that were just stupid. The most popular password was "123456," followed by "password." Other foolish choices included "lifehack," "qwerty," "monkey," "letmein," "cheese," "trustno1," and "passw0rd."

Gawker staff members did not think outside the box either. As many as 15 had exceptionally weak passwords. One staffer had his password set to his name, followed by "1." Many others simply used common phrases and words.

Source: PC World

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Comments

Re: Password Insecurity: An Analysis of Gawker User ...

Submitted by Speeder on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 15:26.

When people come to ask me how to hack someone else orkut, MSN, etc... (when you are the tech savy guy this is the only reason people call you, beside broken computers), I have to explain that it is actually near impossible, and what happen is that those that claim got their account "hacked" or gave their passwords, or had a stupid password.

And I learned about stupid passwords the hard way, someone logged in on my ICQ (54413174) about 3 yeras ago, and changed the password :/ I never got it back. (the password was 1234... I kinda deserved it).

--- Maurício Gomes twitter.com/agfgames

Re: Password Insecurity: An Analysis of Gawker User ...

Submitted by hellfire7885 on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 15:15.

Glad I don't use Gawker

Re: Password Insecurity: An Analysis of Gawker User ...

Submitted by LegendaryGamer00 on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 15:08.

Luckily, I checked and my data was not part of the list.

Yay for me?

-------------------- Making sure I retain my INSANITY

Shout box

IanC: @E. Zachary Knight - MS certainly got the checkbook out for EA, so no surprise on how negative they are over the Wii U.05/21/2013 - 1:54pm

MaskedPixelante: So now I have to wonder, how many of EA's games are skipping the PS4 because of their pro-used stance?05/21/2013 - 1:53pm

E. Zachary Knight: On the TV front, does the XBox One require a cable/satellite subscription or will I be able to use my over the air channels?05/21/2013 - 1:48pm

E. Zachary Knight: Also, that name was not one of the options on our poll.05/21/2013 - 1:42pm

E. Zachary Knight: This presentation also shows why EA has been so negative about the Wii U. They have had a massive hardon for the XBox One forever.05/21/2013 - 1:42pm

james_fudge: two female presenters05/21/2013 - 1:40pm

E. Zachary Knight: Quote: Are developers forced to create games that have these online features, and are thus not playable offline? They are not, Xbox exec Whitten said to Wired — but “I hope they do.”05/21/2013 - 1:40pm

E. Zachary Knight: The Wired article I linked to earlier has a different story. While it will be possible to play offline, that is a game to game thing, not standard. http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/05/21/2013 - 1:39pm

Andrew Eisen: According to Geoff Keighley, Don Mattrick says Xbox One is not always on. https://twitter.com/geoffkeighley/status/33690727595023155305/21/2013 - 1:35pm

Andrew Eisen: Just like how Sim City needs the cloud for various computations. (Note to anyone unaware: Sim City does not need the cloud for various computations. That was a barefaced lie by EA Maxis.)05/21/2013 - 1:24pm

MaskedPixelante: So all in all, more of the same, with the possibility of used game restrictions and always on DRM disguised as "cloud computing".05/21/2013 - 1:20pm

Andrew Eisen: Absolutly zero gameplay footage. Doesn't look like there are going to be a lot of games ready to launch by the end of the year.05/21/2013 - 1:12pm

E. Zachary Knight: They didn't talk about any of the other exclusives. I guess they are saving that for E3.05/21/2013 - 1:06pm

E. Zachary Knight: quicknoid, They have 15 exclusives coming in the first year with 8 of them being original franchises. I think Ghosts is at least a timed exclusive.05/21/2013 - 1:06pm

MaskedPixelante: Maybe they could stick some facial recognition software on the new Kinect to keep 12 year olds off of Xbox Live. That'd be nice.05/21/2013 - 1:06pm

ddrfr33k: I'm still not holding my breath05/21/2013 - 1:04pm

ddrfr33k: Hmm...If Ghosts has as much emphasis on the story as they say they do, they might be able to turn the series around...05/21/2013 - 1:04pm

quiknkold: The Halo TV Show is the only thing that impressed me.05/21/2013 - 1:03pm

quiknkold: so to summarize. Xbox One is a Glorified Television box with gaming capabilities. Voice activated tv because people are getting lazyer than using a remote control. more kinect, no exclusive games, and they only show sports games and call of duty05/21/2013 - 1:03pm

Sleaker: looks like no more MS hardware for me.05/21/2013 - 1:02pm

All shouts

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