Gawker hackers expose easy-to-guess passwords such as ‘password’ and ‘1234’
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Gawker’s stolen user data, such as user names and e-mail address information, have exposed a bad habit among commenters of the popular network of blogs -- easy-to-guess passwords.
Really, really bad passwords. Even worse than one might think.
Take for example, the No. 1 choice among Gawker users whose info was exposed: ‘123456.’
Or the second-most-popular password -- ‘password.’
Coming in third-place was ‘12345678.’
And the list doesn’t get much better from there. The 50th-most-selected password was ‘Internet.’
‘Starwars,’ ‘pokemon,’ and ‘batman’ are also on the list; bringing a little pop culture into the poor-choice password mix.
The Wall Street Journal compiled the list of the top 50 passwords chosen by the 188,279 Gawker users whose information was exposed in the Monday hack.
Given Gawker’s breach, which was also tied to a spamming of Twitter, as well as a recent hack of McDonald’s customer information and the temporary-take-downs of WikiLeaks, Visa and MasterCard, choosing a new, more unique password might not be a bad idea.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles