Hundreds of US government employees, including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies, used Internet connections in their federal offices to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison and also two Canadian law firms have filed a $578m class-action lawsuit against the companies that run Ashley Madison after a hacker group’s data breach exposed some 39 million memberships, Reports Associated Press (AP).

Charney Lawyers and Sutts, Strosberg, both of Ontario, said Friday that they filed the lawsuit on behalf of Canadians who subscribed to Ashley Madison and whose personal information was disclosed to the public.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the Ontario superior court of justice, targets Avid Dating Life and Avid Life Media, the Toronto-based companies that run AshleyMadison.com

The AP also traced many of the accounts exposed by hackers back to federal workers. They included at least two assistant US attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department.

The AP is not naming the government subscribers. The AP’s analysis also found hundreds of transactions associated with Department of Defense networks.

In a written statement, a DND spokeswoman echoed some of Murphy’s statement, and said the department “has policies and practices in place to deter, detect and enforce unauthorized and prohibited computer use.”

Associated Press (AP)