15,000 government emails found in Ashley Madison leak

(Image credit: Carl Court/Getty Images)

published 19 August 2015

Things might be heating up on the Hill today, and not because of policy debates or the 2016 election.

Hackers leaked the private account details of 32 million AshleyMadison.com users on Tuesday — including 15,000 profiles that were tied to government email addresses, The Hill reports. The website, which is used for pairing up married users looking to have an affair, reportedly had the highest rate of membership in Washington, D.C.

Email addresses have been discovered linked to the White House, Congress, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as higher-ups in the military. Full names, email addresses, phone numbers, and passwords of users were all published by the hackers, who earlier last month threatened the leak if the site wasn't taken down. Officials confirmed that at least some of the leaked information is real — so it looks like millions of people will have a whole lot of explaining to do.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.