Hayley Tsukayama reports:
Hacker group LulzSec released more than 62,000 e-mail addresses and passwords and encouraged its Twitter followers to try out the sign-in information at sites around the Internet.
“These are random assortments from a collection, so don’t ask which site they’re from or how old they are, because we have no idea,” the group wrote.
Read more on Washington Post.
After inspecting the data dump, security expert Mikko Hypponen suggested that some of the data appeared to comes from Writerspace.com:
Writerspace.com did not respond to an email inquiry sent to them this morning about the possibility but an hour ago, they posted this notice on their web site’s homepage:
Today an anonymous group of hackers known as LulzSec posted a list of 62,000 e-mail addresses and passwords. That list included about 12,000 e-mail addresses and passwords from Writerspace members.
We are in the process of contacting all members impacted by the attack, and we sincerely regret the inconvenience this may cause any of our site members. We want to assure our readers that we take our responsibility for protecting your personal information very seriously. Unfortunately, there are people who make it their mission to find and exploit any vulnerability no matter how secure the system. Today’s email list was posted by the same group that hacked the CIA website earlier in the week and the US Senate website last week.
Our techs are working to insure that our server is as secure as possible. Meanwhile, remember that visiting our site and entering the contests or participating in our chatrooms does not require a login or password. However, for those who use logins to post on our blogs and forums, please remember to change your passwords regularly, and take a moment to make sure the passwords for all of your online accounts adhere to industry security standards: mix uppercase and lowercase, numbers and punctuation; use at least 8 characters, don’t use dictionary words, and don’t use the same password for more than one site.
Update: WriterSpace.com responded to the email inquiry after I posted the above, writing “Approximately 12,000 of the email addresses on that list belonged to Writerspace members.”