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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Gawker Hack prompt resets the password for LinkedIn, Yahoo, more (PC Magazine)

Gawker

A hack of the Gawker comment boards would follow in several sites on the Web, including LinkedIn, Yahoo, and "World of Warcraft Blizzard" These and other companies have issued resets password clients that they believe may have been affected.

LinkedIn, said Tuesday that he has "a very small fraction" of members whose accounts were potentially compromised by an attack Gawker and instructions for a reset password sent.

"As we closely followed the situation, we decided that it was imperative to take preventive measures to ensure that these passwords in flight were not used to attack members of LinkedIn," Vicente Silveira, Senior Manager product to LinkedIn, said in a blog.

Yahoo and Blizzard has taken similar steps.

"As part of our ongoing security measures, we published a password reset for users." Yahoo makes this periodically to ensure the safety of users, "a Yahoo spokeswoman said in a statement."

"To minimize the effects of this compromise - for players who could use the same connection information for their Gawker media accounts and their battle.NET-we have published email reset password for multiple accounts," Blizzard said in a note on its Web site.

A spokesman for Blizzard has refused to reveal how WoW players have been affected.

At issue is a weekend hack comment database that accessed Gawker, home to about 1.5 million of usernames, emails and passwords. Gawker urged users to change their password immediately, especially if they use the same password on other Web sites. The vulnerability of password has led to a Twitter Monday spam attack.

The FBI confirmed Tuesday that he studied hack Gawker, led by a group called Gnosis.

Editor's note: This story has been updated at 2: 45 pm Eastern with the commentary of Blizzard.

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