Australian government workers exposed as hackers attack dating website

Almost two dozen Australian government emails have been exposed by hackers who breached an online dating website that restricts its membership to only attractive people.

The website, Beautiful People, sifts out ugly singles, and claims to have more than one million global members.

Those users, including the 18 Australian government workers, now face having their personal details - including sexual preferences, home address and income - sold online by nefarious hackers.

Australian IT security expert Troy Hunt told ninemsn, of the 1.1 million individual accounts leaked, 18 were Australian government email addresses.

Departmental employees from the ministries of Education, Health and Employment were caught up in the hack, Hunt revealed to ninemsn. Further email addresses included Parliament of South Australia and Ku-ring-gai Council, in Sydney's northern beach suburbs.

The controversial dating website was breached in November last year, but it is only now the hack, and subsequent selling of private information, has gone public, Hunt confirmed.

"We’ve gone five months with this data being sold and traded before it’s been made public," Hunt said.

Beautiful People should have advised its members of the hack immediately, he added.

"Victims of the breach need to understand their exposure so they can take appropriate precautions such as changing passwords and monitoring for identity theft."

In line with the old proverb, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", the website's one-million strong membership uses a voting system to accept or reject aspiring candidates.

The hack of Beautiful People follows the attack on Ashley Madison, a website where married people can find partners to have affairs with.

More than 700 Australian government officials and police officers had their details revealed in the Ashley Madison hack.