Dark web exposure of European politicians’ data examined

More than 900 of almost 2,300 official government email addresses belonging to politicians of Great Britain, France, and European Parliament have been exposed on the dark web, mostly impacting British senior government and opposition members, whose email addresses appeared over 2,100 times, SecurityWeek reports.

Despite being commonly available to the public, such email addresses pose a cybersecurity risk after being leveraged to create accounts in Adobe, Dropbox, LinkedIn, news platforms, and other third-party online services, according to a joint report from Proton and Constella Intelligence. The findings also showed that the leaked passwords corresponded to 697 plaintext passwords, as well as the exposure of politicians' birthdates, social media accounts, and addresses, which could be exploited in phishing incidents.

"If a politician reused one of these exposed passwords to protect their official email account, it could also be at risk," said Proton.