A large part of Ashley Madison's data stolen by the hackers group has been posted online. The dating website's used to be "Life is short. Have an affair." However, some 37 million users of the hookup might get sorry for ever registering, since the still-unfolding leak could be now quite damaging for their reputation, professional career and marriage.
The hackers self-identify as The Impact Team. The data released by them includes sensitive internal data stolen from the Toronto-based firm Avid Life Media (ALM), the company that owns Ashley Madison. The hackers group got also in possession of data from the related hookup sites Established Men and Cougar Life.
In a declaration for KrebsOnSecurity, ALM Chief Executive Noel Biderman said the company was "working diligently and feverishly" to recover ALM's intellectual property.
The hackers leaked snippets of account data sampled from among some 40 million users across ALM's trio of properties, as well as employee network account information, salary information, maps of internal company servers and company bank account data.
This data leak comes after the hackers already stole and leaked online user data on millions of accounts from dating site Adult Friend Finder.
Data published now from infidelity website Ashley Madison includes user profiles with names, encrypted passwords, phone numbers, addresses, and partial credit card numbers. Hackers claim that what they released is authentic personal information of the hookup site's registered users
While Ashley Madison condemned the attack, it did not confirm that the information leaked online was genuine. However, several security researchers who have been analyzing the data are suggesting that the database and data seem to be authentic. Perhaps the data release will lead now to anxious partners searching for the names of people they suspect may have used the site.
The Guardian confirmed that among data released are included the details and the email address of a Guardian journalist who had used the dating website Ashley Madison as part of an investigation.
Ashley Madison declared that "this event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality." According to the website its users were just engaged in fully lawful online activities and "this is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com". The criminals involved in this act, adds the official communicated from Ashley Madison, "have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror and executioner", trying to impose their personal notion of virtue on all of society, however the company owning the website will not sit idly by and allow them "to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world."
