The Top 50 Gawker Media Passwords 209
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."
Get a LIFE! (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on whether you meticulously memorize or keep a record of dozens of passwords...
No, I don't. I use the same password /UID for *EVERY* bullshit site that really doesn't matter that much but I want to see the "subscription" content. And yes, I don't care if people know the UID / PASS to the bullshit sites that really doesn't matter that much but I want to see the "subscription" content. Folks, it's Gawker. If you're stressing over the disclosure of your Gawker UID/PWD, you seriously need to get a life.
consider what was being "secured" (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not Really Sold on the Correlations (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing this study shows is the most popular passwords used by people who don't care about security.
Good passwords will be reasonably unique. When you try to find the most common passwords, of course the bad ones will bubble up to the top, even if only a fraction of a percent of people use them. This list might be interesting, but it doesn't really show anything significant about Gawker's users.