Hackers Steal Email Addresses and Names from Irish Job Site's Database

A large Irish job website called RecruitIreland.com notified its users that hackers managed to steal as many as 400,000 email addresses and names from its database for spamming purposes.

The company operating the website learned of the breach on February 8 from external reports and took the decision to shut it down immediately.

An investigation followed and the company contacted data security and computer forensics experts to help.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner and the Gardai (national police) were also notified and kept up to date as the internal investigation unfolded.

After analyzing the access logs the company feel pretty confident that account passwords or other personal information were not affected

The website returned back online today after the vulnerability exploited by the hackers was identified and patched.

The nature of the vulnerability was not revealed, but giving that it allowed the extraction of information from the database, the most likely candidate is SQL injection.

"BH Consulting worked closely with RecruitIreland.com to identify how the web site was compromised and that particular issue has now been addressed.

"Additional measures have also been implemented to enhance the security of the website and we will continue to work with RecruitIreland.com to assure the security of the system.

"Extensive testing of the website for any security weaknesses has also been conducted and the security of the website is in line with industry recognised standards," said Brian Honan, the expert performing the security audit.

There is evidence the stolen information is already being abused by spammers. Users  reported receiving fake emails about an "assistant" position in Ireland/UK.

The job's description specifically asks applicants to have a personal bank account and a netbook with unlimited Internet access, making it sound like money mule recruitment scam.

"Please be assured that we take any breach of our security very seriously and will continue to monitor the site and liaise with authorities in relation to this investigation," the company said in a statement posted on the site.