Thread: Passwords & e-mail address of top officials is being sold online by Russian hackers

List of passwords and e-mail address list of MPs and top officials is being sold online by Russian hackers for just £2 a time

• 1,000 MPs and parliamentary staff and 7,000 police employees are affected
• The list is believed to include Cabinet members Justine Greening and Greg Clark
• Foreign office IT boss Peter Jones' surpsingly weak password appeared online

By Ross Parker For The Daily Mail and Paddy Dinham For Mailonline
PUBLISHED: 21:10 EDT, 22 June 2017 | UPDATED: 23:43 EDT, 22 June 2017

Highly sensitive data including passwords and email addresses of some of the country’s most powerful officials is being sold online by Russian hackers.

Around 1,000 British MPs and parliamentary staff, 7,000 police employees and more than 1,000 Foreign Office officials are all understood to have had confidential information traded on the internet without their knowledge.

Even some of the Prime Minister’s closest government ministers, including education secretary, Justine Greening, and business secretary, Greg Clark, are thought to have been affected by the hack.


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Education secretary, Justine Greening, and business secretary, Greg Clark, are thought to have been affected by the hack.

The huge database was being sold for just £2, with the low price justified by the fact it had already spent months being passed around. Its original price is likely to have been much higher.

Two lists containing information about the victims’ private internet accounts reportedly appeared on Russian-speaking sites, before later being released for free, the Times said.

The data is believed to have come from the careers networking site, LinkedIn, and social media site, MySpace, as well as a number of other smaller services.

In total, the master database is believed to have more than one billion records.

The head of IT at the Foreign Office was also left red-faced after his passwords appeared on the list.


Peter Jones, the chief operating officer, appears to have used a surprisingly weak password after it appeared on one of the lists more than 3,700 times.

It is feared hackers could potentially use the data to blackmail or impersonate officials via their personal accounts.

Hackers could even gain access to governmental accounts, if the officials used the same password for both personal and professional accounts.

The National Cyber Security Centre, which protects the country against potential cyberattacks, told the newspaper that it would reissue guidance to government departments after it was made aware of the issue.


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Peter Jones, the chief operating officer, appears to have used a surprisingly weak password after it appeared on one of the lists more than 3,700 times

‘If these people used the same credentials . . . elsewhere — potentially on government systems — that’s not good,’ said Rob Pritchard, a cybersecurity specialist at the Royal United Services Institute.

Among the list of affected police officials was Andy Redwood, who led the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

The three most passwords with the police email addresses in one of the lists were ‘password’, ‘police’ and ‘police1’.

Ms Greening and Mr Clark did not respond to requests for comment when they were contacted by the newspaper, while Mr Jones and Mr Redwood declined to comment.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4631190/MPs-passwords-e-mail-address-sold-Russian-hackers.html


Read more:

• Ministers¿ email addresses and passwords up for sale | News | The Times & The Sunday Times

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz4kyDnsIwg

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