Auditors

[Techie1 + 2,024]

Email addresses and passwords mined from cyber attacks over several years.

Much of the data comes from a historical hack of LinkedIn

An investigation by a national newspaper claims several thousand police passwords are being advertised for sale on Russian hacking websites.

The Times  says the list contains more than 7,000 police passwords, including that of former Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, who led the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

"The three most common passwords associated with police email addresses in one of the lists were 'police', 'password' and 'police1'," the article says.

It adds: “Email addresses and passwords used by Justine Greening, the education secretary, and Greg Clark, the business secretary, are among stolen credentials of tens of thousands of government officials that were sold or bartered on Russian-speaking hacking sites.”

The data, which includes over 800 Home Office staff and 1,000 Foreign Office staff, comes from an attack on the business networking site LinkedIn back in 2012 as well as a number of smaller websites.  

The National Cyber Security Agency has reissued its guidance to government departments in light of the story.

A spokesman said: “There is no evidence these passwords were linked to any government accounts and we have also told people multiple times not to use the same password on different platforms.”

Much of the data appears to be up to a decade old but still presents a threat according to a cyber security expert.

Rob Pritchard, a cybersecurity specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Times: “If these people used the same credentials elsewhere, potentially on government systems, that’s not good.”

The Home Office said the issue was a matter for the NCSC while the National Police Chiefs' Council had been approached for comment but had not replied as this article went live.

View on Police Oracle

[Cathedral Bobby + 1,174]

Bloody hell, Trump makes one stupid invitation to hack the Democrats and Putin takes it as open season on the rest of us. And he says there's no collusion. Anyone know what John McDonald's been up to. "Hi Jeremy it's JMc, just as an aside, given we will never use the nuclear codes do you mind if I gave them to my friend Vlad".