Journalist Brian Krebs tracked the information back to hackers who ran an online market for confidential data.
He found they got their data by compromising computers sitting on the data brokers’ corporate networks.
In March, Krebs, as well as the FBI and US Secret Service, started looking into how the exposed.su website was getting hold of social security numbers and other details of many famous Americans.
The mysterious website, which has now been closed down, published confidential information about Bill Gates, Beyonce Knowles, Jay-Z, Ashton Kutcher and many others.
Source: BBC