Posted on 08/19/2015 9:00:06 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Thousands of clients using the affair-oriented Ashley Madison website listed email addresses registered to the White House, top federal agencies and military branches, a data dump by hackers revealed.
The detailed data, released Tuesday, will likely put Washington, D.C., on edge. The nation’s capital reportedly has the highest rate of membership for the site of any city.
Indeed, more than 15,000 of the email addresses used to register accounts were hosted on government and military servers.
Buried in the list are emails that could be tied to multiple administration agencies, including the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, as well as several tied to both the House and Senate.
For a month, hackers using the name “Impact Team” have been holding hostage the dating profiles of those who registered on the site. The group threatened to publicly out the potential adulterers if the site’s owner, Avid Life Media, didn’t take down Ashley Madison, which uses the tagline, “Life is short. Have an affair.”
Security researchers said on Wednesday that they believe the data released following the hack at Ashley Madison is authentic.
“This dump appears to be legit,” said David Kennedy, CEO of information security company TrustedSec, which monitors cyber attacks, in a blog post. “Very, very legit.”
Security journalist Brian Krebs reported several of the site’s users told him their real information is in the data dump.
The leaked database is staggering, according to researchers, and larger than expected at 37 million records, or nearly 10 gigabytes compressed.
“For folks that may not know, that is massive,” Kennedy said. “Huge.”
“It's full account information,” said Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security, in a blog post. That includes full names, emails, phone numbers, addresses and passwords.
“It also includes dating information, like height, weight, and so forth,” Graham added. “It appears to contain addresses, as well as GPS coordinates. I suspect that many people created fake accounts, but with an app that reported their real GPS coordinates.”
Other tech news outlets, such as CSO, have discovered British government officials, United Nations employees and Vatican staff among the millions of people in the leaked database.
However, the site reportedly did not check the validity of email addresses, and it’s likely that many of the government email accounts were faked. For instance, several emails were registered at “whitehouse.gov,” whereas White House officials use “eop.gov” for email communications.
The hackers have indicated their mission is to publicly shame the company, while also teaching its users a lesson.
“Find yourself in here?” they said in a statement posted with the data dump. "It was [Avid Life Media] that failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and claim damages. Then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you’ll get over it."
It goes without saying, if they have your credit card on file, you're screwed. It's best at this point to go seek out marriage counseling or a good divorce lawyer (and probably have a private conversation with your boss).
This being said, there's a potential here for a huge number of people who never had much to do, if anything at all, with Ashley Madison to see their lives upended.
Does anyone really think Tony Blair set up an account with AM? And if not Tony Blair, what about the countless John_Smith@yahoo.com or the other John_Smith@fbi.gov (with a security clearance)?
Have you ever received a spam email from your own yahoo.com address? I have.
Every single one of them (the gubmint types) will use that excuse since you posted previously. (Forgot which #)
“I Know Nutt’ng”
Let’s see how many government servers are reported to be hacked by someone trying to ruin the reputations of the guilty “public servants” who fear they will be outed in this scandal.
Why would they be so stupid not to use a throwaway gmail account?
On the San Antonio, TX news, it stated that after DC, San Antonio had the most members on Ashley Madison.
Honestly, you'd have to be a first-rate idiot to use your .gov email account to sign up for Ashley Madison. I'd imagine most people who were serious about using the site in the way it was intended would create a free email account specifically for that purpose.
Still a couple thousand security clearances up for termination.
Hello. We are talking about government type here.
Not all most of them are sharp crack team portrayed by Hollywood fantasy writers.
After screwing the general public all day, they want to finish the day with someone specific
True, but I still find it inconceivable that there are 15,000 government employees stupid enough to use their .gov email to sign up to Ashley Madison --particularly in light of the fact that real email addresses were never required in the first place.
Anyways, have you checked to see if *your* work email address was one of the 32 million? I haven't. Why should it be? I've never visited Ashley Madison, let alone signed up.
That doesn't mean it's not there. Because there's nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent someone from using my email address, or yours, or Clint Eastwood's, Ted Cruz's or President Obama's from signing up to Ashley Madison.
There is that. Or “I don’t know seeking I don’t know”.
snorkel...
Yeah...too bad no one can see them. I haven’t seen a link or list anywhere...
10 gigs of data and one search in micro seconds determined 15,000 .gov and .mil domains.
And Hillary when ordered to turn over emails had 55,000 of them PRINTED OUT ON PAPER.
That Luddite act alone should disqualify her from the Presidency.
THIS STORY IS A RED HERRING! I REPEAT THIS STORY IS A RED HERRING! DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS TO ASHLEY MADISON. NEW COMPUTER VIRUS BEING SENT AROUND THE WORLD.
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