The situation is looking even more Gawkward for Nick Denton’s blog empire.
Gawker Media is still vulnerable to hackers and a second security hole exists that has yet to be fixed, members of the hacker group that stole info on 1.3 million of the site’s registered users said yesterday in a report.
One member of the group, called Gnosis, told the online news site, The Daily Beast, that hackers gained access to e-mail addresses and passwords not through the company’s source code, known as Minify, but through other so-called “open doors.”
Denton’s Gawker uses a three-year-old version of the security software and has not updated to a more secure version, the hackers said.
When asked by The Beast whether the problem had been fixed, Denton said, “I don’t think anyone can ever say that with 100 percent confidence. But we have locked out this particular group of hackers, have changed all administrator passwords and we’re taking other steps.”
Denton was scheduled to be interviewed by FBI yesterday about the attack. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Those affected by the Gawker hack hail from every corner of the media business, including The New York Times, NBC Universal and talent agency CAA, according to a list of more than 100,000 user names and email addresses obtained by The Post late yesterday. Their anger seemed to grow yesterday, as some took to Twitter to vent their frustrations.
Cox Media Group’s social media manager, Mathilde Piard, tweeted, “I tried to comment once three years ago, failed the snark test and never logged back in, and my info still got hacked. It’s like I got f***ked x2 by Gawker.”
Along with Gawker, McDonald’s and Walgreens were also hacked last week. “Copy-cat hackers are coming out and any company that would make a good headline ought to be on ‘red-alert’,” said security expert Hemanshu Nigam, founder and CEO SSP Blue.