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Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in

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Re: Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in

#41

Post by metageek »

jedsmith wrote: post #4

What is the point of including the domain tied to the address? It just decreases the anonymity of what you've hashed, and actually does a disservice. There are corporate domains in there and the namespace of what to search for becomes a lot smaller. In addition, my domain is my name. I saw many others in the file that this was the case for. It's not a big leap to compute my e-mail from 'jedsmith.org', and I'm sure it…

I found it useful because I use site-specific email addresses (as in username+domain@example.com). I didn't know if I had a gawker login, so I searched for my domain. If I hadn't found it, I could've saved myself digging through my saved email.

Re: Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in

#42

Post by jedsmith »

abraham wrote: post #28
jedsmith wrote: post #4

What is the point of including the domain tied to the address? It just decreases the anonymity of what you've hashed, and actually does a disservice. There are corporate domains in there and the namespace of what to search for becomes a lot smaller. In addition, my domain is my name. I saw many others in the file that this was the case for. It's not a big leap to compute my e-mail from 'jedsmith.org', and I'm sure it…

Why even bother hashing the email addresses when the entire dump can be downloaded with bit torrent.

Because I'd prefer not to help distribute the leaked information? If you want the information, nothing stopping you from getting it, true. However, me throwing up an entire list of e-mails just adds to the problem.

Re: Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in

#44

Post by ja27 »

I got a "We've detected unusual activity on your account" lockout on my Gmail account this morning. Since I can't find anything suspicious on the account I assume it's just bots hammering away, trying the Gawker password and other guesses. Anyone else get that?

Re: Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in

#45

Post by cjdavis »

mjs wrote: post #36

What's the point of these tools that let you know whether Gawker's database held my email address? It's no secret that I have a Gawker account, and a Twitter account, and a Facebook account... What I would like to know is how likely it is that my password could be compromised. How were the passwords stored? Hashed? Salted and hashed?

It is very, very easy. The first 8 characters of your password were hashed using DES without a salt. Your cell phone has enough CPU to crack them all.

Re: Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in

#46

Post by eekfuh »

jrockway wrote: post #11
eekfuh wrote: post #6

266 emails whose domain end with .gov Very interesting.

Interesting that people only have a work account, or interesting that people who work for the government also slack off at work? .gov is not just Obama and super-secret crytpo scientists. It's also the person who makes sure that every form they send out has an OMB Control Number.

(I wasn't going to reply but since I'm getting pretty heavily down-voted I will)

I was commenting on how I thought it was interesting that so many government employee's would use their work email for (most likely) non-work related sites.

Also I find it interesting how assuming you were off such a small comment I posted.

Re: Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in

#47

Post by Danny72 »

ja27 wrote: post #44

I got a "We've detected unusual activity on your account" lockout on my Gmail account this morning. Since I can't find anything suspicious on the account I assume it's just bots hammering away, trying the Gawker password and other guesses. Anyone else get that?

I had that as well. No strange IP addresses are listed as having accessed it, so I assume it's safe.

Re: Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in

#48

Post by mjs »

brown9-2 wrote: post #37
mjs wrote: post #36

What's the point of these tools that let you know whether Gawker's database held my email address? It's no secret that I have a Gawker account, and a Twitter account, and a Facebook account... What I would like to know is how likely it is that my password could be compromised. How were the passwords stored? Hashed? Salted and hashed?

Because some of us don't remember if we have an account on the site and might not be able to download a ~500mb torrent to verify if we do/did.

If you do have an account but your password is not a dictionary word and it's been hashed and salted, do you care?
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