Update: This is not actually related to 4chan or operation payback:

From an email sent toThe Next Web:

It has come to our attention that you are reporting about gawker.com being hacked by Anonymous and Operation payback in the war against the wikileaks drama that is currently taking place. While we feel for Wikileaks plight, and encourage everyone to donate and mirror the site, we are not related to Operation Payback or engaged in their activities. We have compromised all their email accounts and databases, and a significant portion of the passwords have been unhashed into plaintext.

To prove the validity of our claims, here is a sample of the database: [redacted]