LulzSec leaked passwords come from Writerspace

Following LulzSec’s sharing of a list of 62,000+ random login credentials, people who have been looking into it say that some of them are likely to come from online writing community.

As expected, the passwords used most often include “123456”, “123456789” and “password”. But is the fact that many users have used passwords tied to books (“bookworm”, “reader”, “reading”, “booklover'”, and others) has fueled that belief.

“It all points in a clear direction; and if you’re still doubtful, perhaps the smoking gun is the fact that 30 people have chosen ‘writerspace’ as their password,” says Darien Graham-Smith.

And the theory was confirmed by Writerspace: “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.”

They are contacting the owners of the affected accounts and say that their techs are working to insure that their server is as secure as possible. The have also offered some good advice on choosing strong passwords, but I’m not so sure they have been storing the users’ passwords as they should have – i.e. encrypted. Well, either that, or their encryption method of choice was weak.