Big oil suffers big hack: thousands of emails leaked

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into your inbox. Hacker collective Anonymous has dumped thousands of emails from oil giants including Shell, Exxon and BP.

The three oil companies, along with Russian companies Gazprom and Rosneft, are all accused of melting the Arctic icecaps. According to Novainfosec, the first phase of the leak included 317 emails and corresponding MD5 hashed passwords, while phase II included 724 emails and hashed emails and 26 emails with clear text passwords.

According to The Next Web, much of the leak is encrypted but has been posted online in the hopes that hobbyists and enthusiasts will crack it.

So far the only the information in the leak has only been used to add a few ironic signatures to the Save the Arctic petition. Some of the information has, however, fallen into the hands of phishers.