WASHINGTON _ A lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's socialite madam, said that Maxwell's private email server was hacked after her email address was inadvertently revealed in a cache of court documents unsealed last August by a New York federal court.
Those documents, from a lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's victims, shone a light on Epstein's alleged trafficking of young women around the world and included the names of numerous high-powered businessmen and politicians who were part of his constellation of associates.
Senior U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska is set to decide in the coming months on whether to release an even larger trove of documents _ 8,600 pages according to Maxwell's lawyer, Ty Gee.
In a December letter, first reported by the Telegraph, the lawyer reiterated Maxwell's concern that she be given a chance to review the documents for redactions before they are released.
Those additional documents could provide even more information about Epstein's trafficking scheme and Maxwell's connection to it, as well as the names of more prominent men who may have been a party to or aware of his behavior.
So, too, could Maxwell's emails if they were, indeed, accessed by hackers.
Maxwell reportedly kept her emails on a private server, and her lawyer wrote that soon after her email address, "linked to her own domain name," was published, "hackers breached the host computer."
He did not respond to questions from the Miami Herald and its parent company, McClatchy, about how Maxwell learned that her email server had been hacked and whether she knew if hackers had accessed or removed any information from the server.
Cybersecurity experts said that publication of Maxwell's email address _ and the name of her private domain _ could make it easier for hackers to access her information.
"An email address is not like the keys to the kingdom, but it's pretty important," said Fred H. Cate, a law professor and cybersecurity expert at the University of Indiana. "(I)t could tell you where to break in."
While private email servers can provide some advantages for users _ such as a greater awareness of whether a third party or law enforcement is trying to access their emails _ they tend to also bring greater security risks.
Companies such as Google and Microsoft have teams dedicated to monitoring email servers and making sure security protections are up-to-date, said Justin Cappos, a computer science and engineering professor at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering.
"If you run your own server, it's your own responsibility and people tend to fall behind," Cappos said.
The December letter from Maxwell's lawyer has itself been a subject of controversy, as it was initially not placed on the court docket or provided to other parties in the legal dispute.
"We are glad that Judge Preska has decided to release this letter," said Christine Walz, an attorney representing the Miami Herald.
The Miami Herald has argued in court that the documents in the original lawsuit, filed in 2015 and subsequently sealed, should be released to the public.
The Herald's Perversion of Justice series, first published in November 2018, dissected the non-prosecution agreement Epstein's legal team worked out with the Justice Department in 2008 despite nearly three dozen underage girls accusing Epstein of sex abuse, and helped lead federal prosecutors to bring new charges against the multimillionaire in 2019.
The financier died in federal custody last August, one day after the Herald and other news outlets reported on the release of the first batch of documents from the Giuffre lawsuit. The death has been classified as a suicide.
