Multiple local government email addresses found in Ashley Madison hack

A group of cyber-pirates known as The Impact Team published Wednesday 9.7 gigabytes of hacked data about users of AshleyMadison.com, including e-mail accounts and information related to credit card transactions.

Email addresses on the list included those for employees of the state departments of Transportation, General Services, Public Health, Corrections and Rehabilitation, Industrial Relations and Water Resources, as well as the state judiciary.

And Canberra – capital of our fine nation – ranks right up high.

Ashley Madison has not verified whether the leaked information is authentic.

A hacking group broke into the Ashley Madison site and took huge amounts of data, including, email addresses, IP addresses and sexual interests.

Still, logging onto a site like Ashley Madison and using a government-issued email likely violates web policies at most municipalities in South Florida.

A class-action lawsuit filed in Canada this week against the company seeks damages for Canadian users whose personal information was hacked and leaked online.

An official with the company also says it doesn’t check email addresses – precisely to ensure no account can be conclusively linked with a specific person. This means that many of those whose data has been leaked can claim that they were either signed up without their knowledge, or that they were just browsing.

In addition, 14 addresses came from Port Authority email domains, and 10 of those were found to be working.

“I’m not surprised there’s a change, but I’m surprised it went up”, said Moshe Alexenberg, director of digital insights at SimilarWeb.

Are you on the compromised Ashley Madison list?

That process includes the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the RCMP, OPP and Toronto police, according to the company statement that says “the individual or individuals who are responsible for this straightforward case of theft should be held accountable to the fullest extent of global law”.

Chairman of Digital Rights Ireland and UCD law lecturer TJ McIntyre said those who had registered on the site had done nothing illegal.