Gawker data breach

Breach date: 2010-12-11. Added to this index: 2013-12-04. Accounts affected: about 1.2M. Domain: gawker.com.

What happened

In December 2010, Gawker was attacked by the hacker collective "Gnosis" in retaliation for what was reported to be a feud between Gawker and 4Chan. Information about Gawkers 1.3M users was published along with the data from Gawker's other web presences including Gizmodo and Lifehacker. Due to the prevalence of password reuse, many victims of the breach then had their Twitter accounts compromised to send Acai berry spam.

Breach data sourced from Have I Been Pwned, used under CC BY 4.0. Additional breach metadata provided by XposedOrNot. DataExposed is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by either.

What was exposed

  • Email addresses: The email address you used to register or log in. It is the most common field in breaches because it doubles as your username on most sites.
  • Passwords: The secret you use to sign in, stored by the breached service either in plain text, in a scrambled form called a hash, or encrypted. How it was stored decides how quickly it can be recovered.
  • Usernames: The handle or login name you chose for an account, which may be public on forums, games and social platforms or used privately to sign in.

What to do now

  1. Check whether your own address is in this dataset with the free email breach check.
  2. Change the password on this service and every other site where you used the same password.
  3. Turn on two-factor authentication on your email account first, because it is the reset path for everything else.
  4. Treat calls and messages that quote real details about you as hostile until you verify them another way.

Frequently asked questions

What data was leaked in the Gawker breach?

The Gawker breach exposed Email addresses, Passwords, Usernames. About 1.2M accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the Gawker breach?

Run the free email breach check with the address you used on that service. It will tell you whether your address appears in this dataset.

What should I do about the Gawker breach?

Change the password on that account and everywhere you reused it, then turn on two-factor authentication. Passwords from this breach are traded and tried automatically against other sites.

Next steps