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Memo Details Gawker Security Strategy

Posted by Soulskill on from the barn-doors-and-horses dept.

Trailrunner7 writes "After a hack of systems belonging to online publishing giant Gawker Media that yielded more than one million passwords, the online media company's chief technology officer has announced new defense strategies aimed at placating their users and preventing further humiliating data breaches. Thomas Plunkett issued a company-wide memo on Friday that lays out the new security measures and suggests the company overlooked security concerns in the rush to develop new features."

8 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Not gonna work.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I read it, but nowhere it mentions not being douchebags. Not gonna work.

    1. Re:Not gonna work.. by PatPending · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Plunkett should be sacked because he is ultimately responsible for his team.

      --
      What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
    2. Re:Not gonna work.. by E+IS+mC(Square) · · Score: 5, Informative

      * That douchbag Prank at CES (http://gizmodo.com/343348/confessions-the-meanest-thing-gizmodo-did-at-ces)
      * Then Brian Lam being complete ass (http://gizmodo.com/303223/halo-3-swag-rebagging-plus-apology)
      * Classy!! "if you're a twerpy little internet chump", " Especially not when we own the fucking podium." - (http://gizmodo.com/5687692/you-write-bias-journalism-and-i-read-derp)
      * Adam Frucci's post on telling off all Apple haters to go fuck themselves - can't find the origina post (which was modified few times when it backfired)
      * Banning any critical commentator (http://gizmodo.com/tag/phantomzone)
      * Being complete douch for the iphone prototype thingy and getting banged in the ass by Jesus Steve Jobs himself
      * Too much hurt? Wow! (http://gizmodo.com/5461485/ipad-snivelers-put-up-or-shut-up)
      * Banning users, creating fake ones, deliberately dissing Nokia and it's users (http://play-this.org/2010/10/nokia-uses-social-pr-tactics-to-battle-gizmodo/)

      The list is endless..

    3. Re:Not gonna work.. by Reaperducer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Wow. I may be in the minority, but I'm certainly glad I've never heard of Gawker. Though it takes the joy out of deliberately avoiding the web site.

      --
      -- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
  2. Absolutely fascinating! by BitHive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been dying to know whether the no-name CTO of some joke of a blog franchise has had any thoughts since his incompetence was made public.

    I, for one, will be eagerly perusing his recommendations to see if there's anything I've missed.

  3. They still don't get it. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In recent weeks, intruders were able to gain access to our web servers by exploiting a vulnerability in our source code, allowing them to gain access to user data and passwords.

    They are still blaming bugs in code. Pretending to be mistakes made by low level programming flunkies. The problem was using an unsalted hash that allowed them to do a simple dictionary attack. Further even the top guys were using very simple passwords. Used the same password for multiple accounts. Continued to leave other accounts and usernames unlocked even after knowing one account using that password has been compromised.

    No. The real problem was that the managers and the top dogs drawing top salaries were clueless idiots. Pretending that it was some kind of stupid bug left in code by some low level programmer shows how disconnected these bozos are from reality.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  4. Re:"The online publishing giant"... by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They are a giant precisely because they are the force behind a fairly diverse range of sites, all of which are big names in their respective fields. You may not have heard the name 'Gawker Media', and I don't expect valleywag or Jezebel to come up on most Slashdotters' daily rotation, but Gizmodo gets linked here (either in stories or comments) fairly regularly.

  5. Re:"The online publishing giant"... by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a good chance you've been to one of their sites before. Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, and io9 are their bigger ones I can recall -- I'm sure there are others. I personally read Gizmodo and io9 quite often, though I've never made an account with them.