State link to cheaters website

A number of email addresses associated with Government departments and State agencies have been discovered on a leaked database of the Ashley Madison website, an online dating site targeted at those who wish to cheat on their significant other.

According to TheJournal.ie a search of the database revealed five email addresses linked to RTÉ, four from the HSE, two from the Department of Agriculture, two from the Defence Forces, one from An Garda Siochana, one from the Department of Justice, and one from Social Protection.

One politician with an oireachtas.ie address was also listed. However, a search by TheJournal.ie of the credit card transactions shows nobody using the politician’s name ever purchased anything from the site.

Some 110,000 of the site’s users are thought to be Irish but, as the website did not use email verification, having an email address listed on the site does not mean the person the email belongs to was the one to sign up.

The Canadian-based website, which encouraged users to embark on affairs, was hacked by a group called the Impact Team last month. The hackers had threatened to release the information they stole from the website, following through with their threat earlier this week.

Information from roughly 32m users was dumped onto the dark web on Tuesday in roughly 10 gigabites. A further 20 gigabites was released last night, including the email inbox of Ashley Madison’s CEO.

Since the leak, there have been several reports of false names and email addresses being used to register on the Ashley Madison site.