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A hacker group using the name “LulzSec” is claiming responsibility for breaking into the database for a Website for single members of the military over the weekend.
According to a post on the blog site Pastebin.com March 25, hackers using the names “LulzSec” and “LulzSecReborn” said they had broken into the site MilitarySingles.com and stolen datafrom passwords to email addressesfrom almost 171,000 accounts.
“The website http://www.militarysingles.com/ was recently closed day ago or so, so we dumped email db,” the message in the blog post said. “There are emails such as @us.army.mil; @carney.navy.mil; @greatlakes.cnet.navy.mil; @microsoft.com; etc. …”
The hack was noted on the Website Databreaches.net. However, in a response to the post, officials with eSingles, which owns MilitarySingles.com, said they were aware of the claim and were investigating the situation. However, they added: “At this time, there is no actual evidence that MilitarySingles.com was hacked, and it is possible that the Tweet from Operation Digiturk is simply a false claim.” They said they were treating the claim as real.
Operation Digiturk first reported the hack over the weekend.
The Databreaches.com site questioned eSingles’ reaction.
“Care to define ‘actual evidence?'” according to the Databreaches.com response. ” I compared the database in the .rar file to the ‘online members’ pictured on your home page and the entries in the data dump correspond to those user names.”
The attack on the singles site comes three weeks after law enforcement officials in the United States and Europe arrested five people suspected of being members of LulzSec, a hacker group that during a 50-day period last year attacked government and corporate Websites and stole data. Among the alleged victims were the CIA, the U.S. Senate and Sony.
The high-profile arrests generated headlines, particularly after it was learned that the break in the case came in August 2011, when authorities arrested Xavier Monsegur, a 28-year-old New York City resident and alleged leader of LulzSec. According to law enforcement officials, Monsegur, who used the online name “Sabu” in his work with LulzSec, cooperated with authorities in hopes of getting a reduced sentence and helped lead to the arrests of the five people March 6.
The arrests also drew the ire of the hacker collective Anonymous, which launched its own attacks in retaliation against such groups as data security firms Panda Security and Symantec, as well as New York Ironworks, a company that sells equipment and gear to the New York City Police Department.