Personal information including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passwords have been made public online after the website http://www.theirishfield.ie was hacked. The Gardai and the Data Protection Office has been notified and are investigating the circumstances surrounding the breach.

It is understood that the personal details were posted on the boards.ie website but were taken down shortly after one of the moderators were made aware of the posting. It is believed that the data will surface elsewhere on the Internet however.

As people generally tend to use the same password for numerous accounts, in the case of a breach like this, it can also end up with email addresses and other user accounts being compromised.

Yesterday the 8th of February the RecruitIreland.com website was compromised. It is believed spammers gained access to the database and compromised names and email addresses for the purposes of spamming.

The website is currently offline as it is not yet  determined how the attack happened. It is believed to be under investigation but in cases like this it is usually down to poor coding.

It is not yet known when the website will come back online.

If you are signed up with RecruitIreland.com you may receive emails similar to the one below which should be ignored. You may also want to think about changing your email password, as like many,  you may have used the same password for your email as you did on recruitireland.com

It was confirmed this morning that the Fine Gael website was hacked overnight by the Anonymous group.

The site, which is now back online was said to have been compromised due to bad coding.

There is also now privacy concerns for the public that have used and commented on the website as Evening Herald Journalist Kevin Doyle today said he was sent a copy of the site database of 3,800 people who used it to leave comments, including their names, email addresses, phone numbers, location and IP addresses.

Read more: http://www.examiner.ie/breakingnews/ireland/eyididqlmhcw/#ixzz1AdISkwTg

Below is the message that greeted visitors to the Fine Gael 2011 Election website located at: http://wwwfinegael2011.com

“Nothing is safe, you put your faith in this political party and they take no measures to protect you. They offer you free speech yet they censor your voice. Wake Up!”

The latest data breach in the HSE has resulted in the medical records of up to 1,500 individuals being compromised.

It is understood that a private IT contractor who was supervised by a HSE staff member downloaded the records on to an unencrypted USB Key and brought the device home that night. He then later emailed the records to a mistyped email address.

An internal investigation within the HSE is said to be underway however the patients whose information has been compromised have not been informed.

Security researchers from Argentina have penetrated the well known Pirate Bay torrent website. It is thought that details of more than four million people have been compromised.  SQL injection is believed to have been used to compromise the website and it’s users details.

The website was shut down for several hours before it was later re-enabled with the security holes closed.

On September 1st last year Eircom blocked it’s customers from accessing the Pirate Bay website after a series of complaints from the IRMA.

The Pirate Bay has recently moved it’s website to Swedish Government servers with the aid of it’s political backers in order to potentially protect it legally from closure.