Gawker Media, the blogging empire best known for its snarky take on current events, was the victim of a security breach on Sunday night, when hackers gained access to some private information.
Gawker, along with its seven sister sites, was invaded by a group of hackers calling themselves Gnosis, who have since released staff and reader passwords, source codes, and internal messages between Gawker staffers.
In a statement given to Mediaite, an anonymous source from the group explained that the attack was “because of their [Gawker's]outright arrogance.” He went on to say, “We considered what action we would take, and decided that the Gawkmedia ‘empire’ needs to be brought down a peg or two. Our groups mission? We don’t have one.”
In addition to releasing passwords, the hackers also were able to shut down the site for a period of time, and were even able to create a fake post under writer Adrian Chen’s name.
“We are deeply embarrassed by this breach,” wrote the Gawker Management on Sunday afternoon.
Gawker is strongly encouraging anyone who has logged in as a commenter to change their passwords, and the password to any e-mail account that may have been associated with it. If you are a Gawker commenter, and you want to know if you're information has been hacked, you can go here.
