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The Top 50 Gawker Media Passwords
wiredmikey writes "Readers of Gizmodo, Lifehacker and other Gawker Media sites may be among the savviest on the Web, but the most common password for logging into those sites is embarrassingly easy to guess: "123456." So is the runner-up: "password." On Sunday night, hackers posted online a trove of data from Gawker Media's servers, including the usernames, email addresses and passwords of more than one million registered users. The passwords were originally encrypted, but 188,279 of them were decoded and made public as part of the hack. Using that dataset, we found the 50 most-popular Gawker Media passwords."
A plurality of Gawker Media passwords are six characters long, but we wondered whether that and other results might differ based on the user’s email provider. Indeed, users of Google and Yahoo’s email services are more likely than Microsoft email users to have passwords of eight or more characters.
Well, Hotmail and Yahoo! require six characters or more and Google requires eight characters or more. Explains the Google/Microsoft difference anyway: People are lazy. While you're statements aren't false, I fail to see their confidence or usefulness. Or are we just trying to pat ourselves on the back for using Google and being part of the "elite?" The funny thing is that if your password is showing up here, it's just as "strong" as the other ones that fell victim to this kind of attack! Regardless of length! Take your pick, "unicorns" or "$r-P_5"?
Popular passwords vary, as well: Gmail users are bigger X-Files fans ("trustno1") and more likely to opt for the slightly clever variant "passw0rd."
Or you're just staring at random data trying to make something out of it. "Slightly clever variant"? Ha, well, whoever decrypted this passwords had that one in mind, you know that for sure. Anything even remotely clever would not show up in here.
Yahoo and Microsoft email users, meanwhile, are much more likely to get sappy with their passwords: "iloveyou."
Come on, one example leads to that kind of generalization?
My work here is dung.
What a coincidence! That's the combination to the airlock protecting the planet!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I have to change the password on my luggage.
I guess I'm the only one to use ****** .
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
You know, it's not like Gawker is everyone's primary email account or has access to their bank records - it's entertainment. So honestly, what's the loss here? For me as a "user", very little. If I even care that much, I'll change my UID/Pass. But maybe, since it's probably a throwaway account anyway, I'll just sign up for a new one and move on.
Seriously, what are "hackers" going to do with my account? It's not even under my real name.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This doesn't show how stupid people are about their passwords; quite the opposite. All you're using the password for is to comment on a stupid blog post. It's actually kind of interesting that a lot of people seem understand that concept and so don't spend a lot of time generating a secure password.
ScienceSeeker.org
No matter how tech savvy the group of users, isn't it all but a given that most common passwords will be weak ones? There's always going to be a subset of users that just use simple passwords. More interesting would be a comparison of what percentage of the users had these weak passwords compared to other, less tech oriented sites.
Of course the most common passwords are weak, the strong passwords are unique...
The idea that a password is neccessary for such an account is idiotic. No one cares about hacking it (or if you do, then you have an unhealthy obsession with TV).
Gawker is a similar timewaster. Wasting your brain power to create/remember a good password for it is foolish.
I see nothing wrong with using "123456" or "password" for it. I am also pretty sure that most intelligent people that use stupid passwords for stupid web sites, don't use stupid passwords for their bank account or their primary email (but maybe for an email they feed to spammers that offer 'deals' if you give them your email.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
One of my disposable passwords was exposed in the leak. (you can search the cracked list. my username is listed, along with a pass circa 2007)
and today after checking my lists, I realized that I used the same password on both Slashdot (frequented!) and Digg (haven't visited since v4). Whatever, I changed it on both of these sites. I didn't bother touching it on Gawker now that I know I can't trust them to actually understand password security.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I have a weak password I use at a lot of silly blog and news sites, short of two such sites (this one and fark...) that is just a trash thing. I don't use the same password at multiple places - duh - short of this weak password. I'm not going to remember dozens and dozens of passwords, and I don't put real info on that type of site anyway. I mean seriously...it's a celebrity gossip site. I just went there for probably the third time in my entire life, top story:
The golden couple of Disney breaks up on Vanessa's 22nd birthday. Katie Couric goes to a Bieber concert. Michael C. Hall divorces. Miley barters for her bong video with Macbooks. Tuesday gossip is always a trade-off.
I mean hell, I wouldn't even use my real name or my established nick on a site like that. What the hell does it matter what the password is, at that point? I very minimal amount of security simply to allow for a very minor amount of distinction between posters, but if it's lost...
Anyway, the passwords used there shouldn't really be held against someone - just sayin.
that people probably don't care if someone steals their "commenting" account password.
The only reason to create it in a first place was because they just wanted to show their nick.
I bet if someone checked Washington Post account database passwords, there'd be the same amount of "Blahblahs" and "F*ckoff123"
Hyperom.com
I use a system I call "tiered passwords". Since there's no way I can remember 20+ unique passwords for all the things that require them, I split them into tiers. Bottom tier is stuff I really don't care if you steal - I use it for Imageshack, Gawker, /., etc. Middle tier is the more important ones - I don't like you using it, but it won't ruin my life if you get access. That's a slightly more complex password (9 characters instead of 6), and I use it for my user-level computer accounts, GMail, etc. Finally, my top-tier accounts are for things that would really be terrible if someone were to get access: my root account and my bank account. That's a 20-character password, pretty much uncrackable unless the NSA gets involved.
This way, I have damage control. If something gets compromised, it's not going to affect as much. Gawker gets hacked, I change my password for a dozen websites, but don't have to worry about my email being stolen or my bank account being drained. Likewise, if someone does manage to hijack my email account, I can tell people over Facebook that it happened, and not to trust that email address anymore. Yes, it's still not as secure as unique passwords for every site, but it's significantly easier on the memory.
Dark Helmet: So the combination is... one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!