The information of users of the website Ashely Madison has been obtained by hackers.
As reported by the Inquisitr , Ashley Madison is a website that helps married couples cheat on one another, with the website’s tagline being, “Life is short, have an affair.” It’s the same site that conducted a study proclaiming that bad Mother’s Day gifts meant more women turned to Ashely Madison the day after the holiday to hook up and cheat on their husbands.
The guy who exposed the massive hack is named Brian Krebs. According to a well-trafficked article on the “Krebs on Security” website, a portion of the 37 million user names from Ashley Madison users have already been leaked online — at least via email at this point. Answers to whether or not this partial data dump of Ashley Madison user names has a live link online on Pastebin or some other of the usual suspects of hacked text file locations are forthcoming.
Staying tuned to Krebs’ Twitter and Facebook accounts for a link to the names that have already been released from the Ashley Madison hacking should prove fruitful — but Krebs has stated that he doesn’t want to be a part of extortion attempts, so he’s not publishing the information he received via email. Therefore, if the hackers from the Impact Team have sent the Ashley Madison data dump links to other sources in the media, the likelihood that they’ll show up on Pastebin or via Reddit or Anonymous News are a safe bet.
“Yes, they sent me direct links to it. I’m not republishing them because I don’t wish to be party to their extortion.”
@PAULANEALMOONEY yes, they sent me direct links to it. I’m not republishing them because I don’t wish to be party to their extortion
— briankrebs (@briankrebs) July 20, 2015
In the meantime, the threats exposed by the Impact Team hackers claim that even those who try to perform a complete delete of their Ashley Madison profiles and user info — such as vital actual names and home or work addresses — remain therein and not deleted from Ashley Madison as certain sneaky users may think.
“Full Delete netted ALM $1.7mm in revenue in 2014. It’s also a complete lie. Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed.”
Although a website for the Impact Team couldn’t readily be found — after all, hackers don’t necessarily like to advertise themselves in that manner — their threats are evident throughout the Krebs piece.
“We are the Impact Team. We have taken over all systems in your entire office and production domains, all customer information databases, source code repositories, financial records, emails.”
Twitter reports that the Ashley Madison search term is a top trending item.
Noel Biderman , the self-proclaimed ‘KING OF INFIDELITY’ and President at Avid Life Media, Inc. — Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Ashley Madison Agency — confirmed the hacking to Krebs, and wants the exposed data removed.
As reported by the Guardian and commentators on their piece about the Ashley Madison hacking, if the user data from the cheating website is exposed en masse, that could mean the end of many marriages.
@mfratto no they did not leave a return email, other than a snarky one and useless one that bounced ([email protected])
— briankrebs (@briankrebs) July 20, 2015
[Image via Ashley Madison]