Spammers have taken over thousands of Twitter accounts after Gawker’s servers were hacked on Sunday, giving cyber attackers access to passwords for 1.3 million passwords. According to BBC News Online, spammers have used the information to break into thousands of Twitter accounts, taking advantage of the fact that many people will use the same password across multiple sites.
It adds that “hundreds of thousands of Twitter users” have seen their accounts compromised and messages sent promoting an Acai Berry diet.
Gawker has extensive FAQs on the issue. “This weekend we discovered that Gawker Media’s servers were compromised, resulting in a security breach at Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot,” the media site says.
It adds that if you have registered an account with any of of the Gawker Media web sites and you did not log in using Facebook Connect, “it’s best to assume that your username and password were included among the leaked data.”