The names of hundreds of people seeking protection visas have been published on the website of the Federal Court in a catastrophic data breach that potentially puts asylum seekers at risk of harm.

Key points: The Federal Court published the names of people who said they had been persecuted in their home countries, potentially putting them at risk

The Federal Court published the names of people who said they had been persecuted in their home countries, potentially putting them at risk The disclosure is a breach of the migration act

The disclosure is a breach of the migration act A spokesperson for the Federal Court described it as "major systemic failure"

The ABC has confirmed that for years, the Federal Court, through the searchable Commonwealth Courts database, has disclosed the names of people who have said they have been persecuted in their home countries.

In a statement, a Federal Court spokesman described the disclosure as a "major systemic failure" and said the court had identified 400 asylum seekers, so far, whose names had been published.

The spokesman also admitted it was an offence under Commonwealth legislation for the court to publish the names of protection visa seekers.

A day after the ABC raised the issue, the Federal Court disabled the search function on the database. The court then put the database back on online, but took it down again after being told by the ABC that names were still viewable.

Migration lawyer Daniel Taylor, who has acted for a number of people seeking protection visas, said he had clients who had been put at risk by the breach.

"[Authorities in foreign countries] can very well read in English, and they can read those names and they can identify the dates of birth and they can identify the claims," Mr Taylor.

"Then they can match that information together with their own information, and they can put together a damning case against any number of these identified refugees and inflict serious harm on them if they come back to their country of origin."

Federal Court was warned of breach years ago

A Federal Court spokesperson described the disclosure as a "major systemic failure". ( ABC News: Darryl Torpy )

Mr Taylor said he has repeatedly drawn the attention of the court to the data breach in individual cases, but the Federal Court failed to grasp the systemic nature of the problem and, as consequence, did not act to fix the problem.

Two weeks ago, Mr Taylor also wrote to the Federal Attorney-General, Christian Porter, to warn him of the data breach, but he said he received no reply.

"Over a few years, I've been raising this issue with the courts on a case-by-case basis, with varying levels of success, but more recently I've been writing to the court in every case that I'm finding," Mr Taylor said.

"But what actually needs to happen is that there's a fundamental problem with the whole system, and all the people whose names or identities have been published in connection with their claims for protection, those people need to be notified and warned that this has occurred so in the event that they go back or are sent back to their country of origin they're ready for what's going to come to them."

Real names listed next to pseudonyms

In the publicly available Commonwealth Courts searchable database, the files of people who have applied for protection visas are listed by pseudonyms, which are usually a collection of letters and numbers.

But in a separate column, the full names of at least some of those applicants were also listed.

Names of people seeking protection were published in the portal's "Name" column, even when the individual was given an alias in other fields. ( Supplied )

The ABC found instances of protection visa seekers from China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Egypt and a number of Middle Eastern countries whose full names had been disclosed.

In one case, an Egyptian man who arrived in Australia by boat made an application for a Safe Haven Enterprise visa on the grounds that he was a Shia Muslim at risk of persecution by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood organisation in Egypt.

The application was denied by Immigration authorities and an appeal by the man was subsequently rejected by Judge Sandy Street of the Federal Circuit Court.

The man's full name was published next to the file number on the Commonwealth Courts database.

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In another case, a Chinese man applied for a protection visa on the grounds that he blew the whistle on corruption within the company he worked for in China.

The application was rejected and the Federal Circuit Court subsequently dismissed an appeal by the man, but his full name was published on the Commonwealth Courts website.

In a third case, a Vietnamese man applied for a Safe Haven Enterprise visa after arriving in Australia by boat, saying he was a Catholic and a member of a banned anti-communist political party in Vietnam.

His application was rejected and an appeal was subsequently also dismissed by the Federal Circuit Court, but the man's full name was published on the Commonwealth Courts database.

Asylum seekers to be contacted 'where possible'

Names of protection visa applicants were public even after their applications were rejected. ( Supplied )

In 2014, a huge data breach occurred when the personal details of more than 9,200 asylum seekers were published on the website of the then Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

According to Mary Crock, a professor of public law at the University of Sydney and an accredited specialist in immigration law, what happened in the wake of that earlier data breach means asylum seekers are unlikely to be able to find out whether unfriendly governments in their home countries have accessed their details.

"It went to the High Court and unfortunately the High Court ruled that although Home Affairs had commissioned KPMG to examine what had happened, that the actual detainees were not entitled to know chapter and verse about whether their particular records had been accessed," Professor Crock said.

"I think a lot depends on how the Federal Court responds to this, but the law, at the moment, is not particularly helpful to individual asylum seekers whose records may have been accessed."

In its statement, the Federal Court told the ABC it would contact asylum seekers whose names were published, or their lawyers, "where possible", but it made no comment about whether it would tell the asylum seekers if their names had actually been viewed online and by whom.

Professor Crock also said asylum seekers needed ministerial permission to apply a second time for protection visas even if their circumstances, such as their names being published on the Federal Court website, changed while they were living in Australia.

"You can make a submission to the Minister saying 'my identity has been disclosed and therefore I am particularly at risk from my home government' but you've got to convince the Minister to do that basically off grid, so to speak," Professor Crock said.

"The Minister is not obliged to consider your application at all and unfortunately the current behaviour of our ministers suggests they are not open to that."