A single hacker has leaked the names and personal information of 20,000 people, many of them U.S. government and military employees.
The hacker, calling himself "Thehacker12," posted an Excel spreadsheet stolen from Allianceforbiz.com, a professional trade show management company, the technology website eWeek reported.
More than 14,000 separate U.S. organizations may have been affected by the breach, including the State Department, the Small Business Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency, eWeek said.
Thehacker12 made the spreadsheet public Monday on the file-sharing sites Pastebin and Mediafire, and via Twitter, where he wrote, "20,000 email-passwords had been leaked consisting mostly of US Mil Army, Govern. & corporate giants."
A quick glance at just the first page of the file includes dozens of .mil and .gov email addresses, all with their passwords beside them. The file also contains user names and company names.
On his Twitter page and his personal blog, Thehacker12 identified himself as a "hacktivist, against the Corrupt & Unjust people in India," as well as a supporter of "AntiSec," the anti-government movement spearheaded by the Anonymous and LulzSec hacking groups.
From this and even more recent exploits, Thehacker12 might be someone to keep an eye on. On Wednesday, just two days after leaking the government and military data, he leaked a database belonging to the Indian coffee conglomerate www.cafecoffeeday.com, containing the emails and passwords of nearly 500 people.