Adobe said Wednesday it is investigating the release of 230 names , email addresses and encrypted passwords claimed to have been stolen from a company database . The information was released on Tuesday on Pastebin by a self - proclaimed Egyptian hacker named " ViruS_HimA. " The hacker , who claimed the database accessed holds more than 150,000 records , posted links to several websites hosting a text file with 230 records . " We have seen the claim and are investigating , " said Wiebke Lips , senior manager with Adobe 's corporate communications . The hacker only released records with email addresses ending in " adobe.com , " " .mil " and " .gov . " A look at the 230 records showed the full names , titles , organizations , email addresses , usernames and encrypted passwords of users in a variety of U.S. government agencies , including the departments of Transportation and Homeland Security , the U.S. State Department , the Federal Aviation Administration and state - level agencies , among others . The published passwords are MD5 hashes , or cryptographic representations , of the actual plain - text passwords . It 's a good security practice to only store hashes rather than the plain - text passwords , but those hashes can be converted back to their original state using free password - cracking tools and enough computing power . Shorter passwords are easier to crack , especially if they contain no special characters and are , for example , just a word composed of lower - case letters . Many MD5 hashes that have already been reversed are available in lists freely available on the internet . Some of the MD5 hashes released in the text file revealed simple passwords . That 's particularly dangerous given that people tend to reuse passwords for other services . Hackers will typically try to use stolen credentials on sites such as Facebook and Twitter to see if they 're valid . Given that the data released on Tuesday includes names and organizations , hackers could act fast in an attempt to steal other information . An email request for an interview with ViruS_HimA was n't immediately returned . The hacker wrote there 's another data leak soon to be released from Yahoo . ;