How to know if LulzSec hacked your email

A Sydney-based security researcher has developed a web portal that allows administrators to check if work email accounts have been compromised.

The portal, (https://shouldichangemypassword.com) allows users to search through databases of email addresses stolen during recent attacks by the likes of LulzSec.

The databases were collated by researcher Daniel Grzelak.

Grzelak intended the web site as a means by which an IT administrator could check whether staff have reused work passwords and email addresses on other web sites which have subsequently been compromised in the recent spate of hacking incidents.

Such concerns are not without warrant: Dozens of government agencies were included in LulzSec's recent publication of 62,000 emails and passwords, and the group's followers boasted that they had reused the details to gain access to user accounts on other web sites including PayPal and Amazon.

Grzelak has thus far  integrated some 800,000 email addresses into the portal database, lifted from 13 databases exposed by LulzSec.

He told SC Magazine Australia that he intends to expand the list and would consider building a batch processing facility that would allow businesses to check an entire staff email directory.

"There is an information asymmetry in the security industry, where attackers know everything and users know nothing," Grzelak, a former penetration tester of seven years said. "This is about changing the balance."

Without it, administrators would have to download stolen databases and search them manually for affected email addresses.

The PHP portal requires an email address to search the list. If it returns a hit, it displays details about the email address was last compromised and how many times it has been included in stolen databases.

Grzelak has removed passwords and other sensitive information from the portal database that are often coupled with stolen emails addresses.

All of the emails are publicly available on sites like The Pirate Bay, which reduces the benefit from hacking Grzelak's portal.

The portal, orginally developed for Grzelak's mother and friends, could have the batch processing facility ready within days, he said.

He doesn't condone LulzSec's hacking spree, but recognised the paradoxical argument that the group is highlighting secuity flaws that would otherwise remain unnoticed.

"If they weren't publishing this stuff, others may be silently using the details for financial gain, and I would not be able to build the database."

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