Gawker passwords hacked

Blog-site Gawker has admitted that its security was breached by hackers, and user account details have been lost

Media and technology blog-site Gawker admitted yesterday that its defences were penetrated by hackers who stole a raft of users' account details.

The company has posted a message on its site urging users to change their passwords, as well as any other internet accounts they may have using the same details.

The posting stated that the organisation was "deeply embarrassed by the breach".

Gawker is owned by Gawker Media, who also administers sites such as Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Jezebel, Deadspin and Fleshbot. User accounts held by all these sites are under threat.

Usernames and passwords purporting to come from the Gawker servers were shortly available on notorious file sharing site Pirate Bay.

Websites are increasingly facing cyber attacks, with several recent high profile cases linked to the ongoing Wikileaks controversy.

It is also believed that cyber activists had been looking to target Amazon.

The group, called Anonymous, is protesting at the company withdrawing services from Wikileaks.

But it looks as though recent problems faced by the site were the result of a hardware failure rather than a cyber attack. In conversation with the BBC, cyber activist group Anonymous claimed to have stopped planned attacks on Amazon due to a lack of resources.

The group did claim responsibility for distributed denial of service attacks against both Mastercard's and Paypal's sites.

The sites were forced offline as part of what the cyber activists are branding 'Operation Payback'.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is currently in custody, having been denied bail at a hearing last week in London.