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."
There is no downside to this!!!!
So.....where’s a link to the names? :)
Here's looking for a Jeremy Boorda moment
It might not be a big deal to you. But I guarantee it’s a big deal to all the people on that list.
Where are the names? Where was the data dumped?
So.....where’s a link to the names? :)
Not sure. Check Drudge. I think he has (several) links, in red.
I bet Bill Clinton has a VIP account with Ashley Madison
I have no doubt there are email accounts in this hack linked to people who have never heard of, much less visited Ashley Madison.
By its nature, government jobs attract the lowest form of humans.
Great drinking party game, play who do you know. If you search someone and find them make the others take a drink, if not you do.
There was one up earlier, but it kept coming back “Resource Limited” (guess it was getting overwhelmed).
Didn’t AM send out a message to the email account requiring a web link click to verify? It seems like every internet message board I’m on does that to try and avoid spammers.
I’ll bet demonrats “men seeking men” users are a majority.
The .gov email addresses aren’t even the most fascinating part of this.
The most fascinating part of this is that the gamergate folks are tearing this data apart to go after the SJWs. Article in WaPo this morning decried that, saying that the SJW’s were the victims, and being cyberbullied.
Can't spoof that.
Yes, it seems every internet message board requires email verification, but not Ashley Madison. At least not according to Wired:
Carlos Danger?
Yes, but how many of those 32 million email accounts were paying customers? I don't know about Ashley Madison but a lot of dating sites will let you sign up for free, "SIGN UP FOR FREE!" is in the banner ad they use, but you have to shell out credit card info to actually use the site past the introductory page.
Interesting, thanks, wow that makes it a real wild card deal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.