Following an unprecedented breach of Ashely Madison—the website whose slogan claims, “Life’s too short, have an affair”—last month, hackers dropped a whopping 9.7 GB of data on the dark web yesterday – listing millions’ of users’ (unconfirmed) account details, logins and email addresses.
NB: Keep in mind that the leaked information cannot be deemed concrete proof of a person’s association or interaction with the website. The legitimacy of the data is still unconfirmed, so take the leak with a grain of salt.
While hacking data and unleashing it to the world is a hugely questionable practice, resisting schadenfreude in this instance is a genuine struggle.
According to AGNews, who mined the leaked data from a forum on the dark web, over 700 Australian Government officials and police appear to have been exposed in the hack; or should we say – over 700 Australian government officials and police who were thick enough to use their work .gov.au email addresses have been listed in the leak.
Every cheating politician rn #ashleymadisonhack pic.twitter.com/jcYYpbNSIg
— Lisa Vikingstad (@LisaVikingstad) August 19, 2015
AGNews have dumped the email addresses—which could have been used to, at the very least, sign up to the site—online.
At a glance of Government-associated emails listed (those with nsw.gov.au, vic.gov.au, nt.gov.au, tas.gov.au, qld.gov.au, wa.gov.au act.gov.au or sa.gov.au email addresses), NSW boasted the highest number of staff listed – 227 of the 737 emails listed were associated with nsw.gov.au. Victoria came in second with 125 emails listed.
LPT: If you’re asking for a friend, you can check whether your information was exposed via the hack by inputting your email here.
Via AGNews.
