Tri-Service

92 MoD Email Addresses Leaked In Adultery Website Data Dump

Sensitive information from millions of AshleyMadison.com accounts leaked online includes MoD email addresses.

Hackers exposing users of the extra-marital philandering website, infamous for its 'Life Is Short. Have An Affair' tagline, have illegally accessed and published private data in what the FBI calls an act of 'cyber vigilantism'.

Highly-compromising data has been dumped on the 'dark web' following the hack and according to the website Political Scrapbook, there are 92 Ministry of Defence staff addresses among the leaked accounts.

Scrapbook has crunched the public sector numbers.

The website has found 1,716 email addresses from universities and further education colleges, using the .ac.uk suffix; 124 using .gov.uk; 92 using .mod.uk; 65 local education authorities and schools using .sch.uk; 56 National Health Service emails and less than 50 police emails (.police.uk)

The UK is not alone in this international name and shame. Personal details from the United States have also been revealed.

Everything from email addresses and financial information to illicit fantasies from up to 15,000 military personnel is now available for the public to see, according to researchers from the US.

The consequences of this sensitive and private information, even beyond the personal element, is extremely concerning to the Pentagon - not least due to reasons of operational security.

Impact Team, the individual (or group) responsible for the leak, said in a statement that accompanied the data that:

"Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and [partner site] Established Men. We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data."

In response to the release, Avid Life Media said that "this event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality. It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities. The criminal, or criminals, involved in this act have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society.

They concluded: "We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world. We are continuing to fully cooperate with law enforcement to seek to hold the guilty parties accountable to the strictest measures of the law."