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Change Your Passwords If You Have One At Gawker

Hopefully, most folks who are affected know this by now. But just in case:

over the weekend. And here's what it has to say about what to do:

"Our user databases appear to have been compromised. The passwords were encrypted. But simple ones may be vulnerable to a brute-force attack. You should change your Gawker password and on any other sites on which you've used the same passwords."

The Associated Press adds this:

"Millions of people are likely affected by the breach because of the popularity of Gawker's sites such as , a tech gadget news site, said Rich Mogull, CEO of Phoenix-based Securosis, a security research firm.

"The damage should be minimal, though, because Gawker probably stored only e-mails, user names and passwords, Mogull said. The problem comes if people use the same passwords on other sites, such as online banking. The hackers likely were able to figure out easy passwords even though they were protected on the Gawker site by a simple algorithm, and could use them to access bank accounts, Mogull said."

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.