Learning From Gawker's Failure

Gunkerty Jeb writes "The Gawker hack has completely disenfranchised their users, not to mention the breach in trust that may well be impossible to regain. Users are demanding that they be allowed to delete their accounts immediately, and beyond implementing such a mechanism, it is likely that Gawker systems will have to be rebuilt from the ground up to avoid future hacks. So, what is to be learned from this perfect storm of bluster and bravado?"

Comments

With big words come big responsibility

[Jonboy X]

The Gawker hack has completely disenfranchised their users

That's quite a hack, depriving users of their right to vote...

Some of us are more fortunate

[Moraelin]

Well, some of us were more fortunate there.

I was born in the quaint town of P5$+19"797q4. It's lovely in the spring. You should visit. My mother's maidens name was B192zve8p6; an ancient and distinguished family, if you must ask. My first pet was a cat named Ö8z~30+r.vd. We all loved her. And I went to ß8s8h,u:82 memorial school.

Strangely enough, nobody ever guesses those ;)

Re:Some of us are more fortunate

[glodime]

That's strange. All I see is ********** for the names of your cat, school, hometown, and mother's maiden name.

Re:These lessons have been applied

[TheRaven64]

Being open does not make Slashdot easier to hack, because it's written in Perl and so even access to the source code does not make it possible for an attacker to understand what it's doing.

Re:These lessons have been applied

[Ecuador]

My biggest gripe on the other hand is that my browsers don't understand the html that Slashdot's Perl code produces...