Activists with hacker skills were behind more than half the data stolen in cyber attacks last year. Photo: AFP/adashi/shutterstock.com

The hacker group known as LulzSec is claiming to have exposed the accounts of nearly 171,000 members of the US military.

The notorious group, which was behind attacks on government agencies and companies including the FBI, CIA, Sony and even PBS, said they exposed the email accounts of

thousands of members on the

“There are emails such as @us.army.mil ; @carney.navy.mil ; @greatlakes.cnet.navy.mil ; @microsoft.com ; etc..,” the group said in a note posted on the website PasteBin.

LulzSec said it dumped a database including a total of 170,937 email accounts from the website, which bills itself as ‘the dating site for single soldiers,’ The Sydney morning Herald reports.

According to the report, the programmers of the website are investigating the attack claimed by LulzSec and are taking measures to increase the site''s security.

“We have enacted a series of security procedures in response,” said Robert Goebel, CEO of ESingles Inc., which owns the site.

“Regardless of whether it was a true claim or false claim, we''re treating it as though it''s true just to be safe,” the paper quoted Goebel, as saying.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon could not be reached for comment about the severity of the database dump