Ashley Madison Data Contains Illinois Government Emails

Six official state of Illinois email addresses were connected to Ashley Madison accounts and are included among the 36 million emails posted on the web this week by criminal hackers who broke into the extramarital-affair-hookup website.

The governor’s office is investigating the use of those state email addresses.

“Of the six (state of Illinois) email addresses connected to the data breach, two are associated with people who no longer work for the state,” said Catherine Kelly, a spokeswoman for Gov. Bruce Rauner, in an email to the Chicago Tribune on Thursday. “The administration has started an investigation to see if any agency policies were violated, and the agencies will take appropriate action. State agencies discourage using state emails for non-governmental purposes.”

The data also includes addresses ending in cookcountyil.gov, lakecountyil.gov and stcharlesil.gov, reports CBS Chicago.

“Just because a name is on a list doesn’t mean that they subscribed to it,” cautioned Governors State University professor Bill Kresse.

Email addresses for the U.S. military, the White House and other agencies also are included in the data.

The hackers, known as the “Impact Team,” broke into the site last month, and demanded that Ashley Madison and companion sites, including Cougar Life, be shut down. When that didn’t happen, the hackers this week put information for 33 million accounts, including 36 million email addresses, names and a bounty of personal information, as well as sexual desires, on what’s known as “the dark web.” This is part of the Internet not indexed by search engines.

» ALSO ON PATCH: Top 20 Chicago Suburbs for Ashley Madison Affairs

Security experts say the data appears to be legitimate, but Avid Life Media, which runs Ashley Madison, has yet to admit that.

“We are actively monitoring and investigating this situation to determine the validity of any information posted online and will continue to devote significant resources to this effort. Furthermore, we will continue to put forth substantial efforts into removing any information unlawfully released to the public, as well as continuing to operate our business,” Avid Life Media said in a statement Tuesday. “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.”

Organizations are already combing through the data and finding ways to make the information searchable to those who aren’t web savvy.

Reports Wired:

... you can search through the data dumped last night by the hackers who hit Ashley Madison by visiting this site, which was launched yesterday by Trustify, an Internet investigation service that tailors to romantic suspicions. Or, if you prefer, you could use this tool. Or this one. All you have to do is enter an email, any email, and see if it was hacked. Finding the email on the list means yes, there was an Ashley Madison account tied to it.

PCMag reports that 95 percent of the accounts appear to be men, and many of the female accounts appear to be fake.

Last month, Patch published a list of Chicago-area suburbs that are home to the greatest concentration of Ashley Madison users, according to data provided by the website. The top 10 include Burr Ridge, Plainfield, LaGrange, Oak Lawn, Deerfield, St. Charles, Palatine, Crystal Lake, Libertyville and Frankfort