[Ansteorra] Sad News!!!

[mikea]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 04:20:35PM -0600, Haraldr Bassi wrote:
> It is also possible that the password was harvested from a major password 
> breach experienced by the gawker.com family of websites, who seem to have 
> lost a boat load of accounts recently. People who use their regular email 
> address as username and use the same password everywhere make it incredibly 
> easy for these people to take over an account. Even to take over all of 
> their accounts.
> 
> Quite often what will happen is once a username/password is obtained, it is 
> used everywhere else that can be conceived, amazon, paypal etc, in the 
> hopes that perhaps something interesting might come out. Think of the havoc 
> that having an amazon account compromised where you have 1-click ordering 
> with stored CCard credentials on your account.
> 
> Haraldr

Quite correct. Walgreens drugstores had a database compromised recently, so
that the addresses of subscribers to their newsletter were released. The
same group appears to have broken into McDonald's corporate servers and
got hold of some address databases there, too. 

http://consumerist.com/2010/12/walgreens-e-mail-list-hacked.html
http://consumerist.com/2010/12/mcdonalds-e-mail-list-hacked.html

Gawker appears to have been a different group, taking revenge for
something that Gawker's CEO said. 
http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-medias-entire-commenter-database-appears-to-have-been-hacked/

*sigh*

Even if the book with the title was terribly badly researched, a world
lit only by fire sometimes appeals very strongly to me. in abstract, I 
must admit, _NOT_ in concrete. 

There! I got back on-topic for the list. 

-- 
Mike Andrews        /   Michael Fenwick    Barony of Namron, Ansteorra
mikea at mikea.ath.cx  /   Amateur Extra radio operator W5EGO
Tired old music Laurel; Chirurgeon; SCAdian since AS XI