In a message accompanying the release, the hackers said: “Hey Noel, you can admit it’s real now”. Forums such as Reddit – the user-powered news and discussion site – carried stories of anguished husbands and wives confronting their partners after finding their data among the massive dump of information.
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More than two dozen email addresses belonging to Arizona state and city employees were among the millions posted this week by hackers of cheating website Ashley Madison.
While little is known about the Impact Team, initial data released on the “dark Web” – an area requiring special anonymizing tools to gain access – last month by the group included a statement explaining the apparent motivations for targeting the site’s owner, Avid Life Media, demanding Ashley Madison be taken offline or suffer the effect of a data dump.
Kathi White, public information officer for TXDOT, says it is not investigating because it can’t confirm the accounts in fact belong to employees.
Security experts have warned the embarrassing leaked data – which includes details on sexual preferences and fetishes – could put these government workers at risk of extortion.
When the first 40 MB leak was released on July 19, Impact Team demanded that Avid Life Media shut down Ashley Madison and Established Men.
“So a list of email addresses is not proof of anyone’s membership”.
Avid Life Media, the site’s Toronto-based parent company, said in a statement Tuesday that it is trying to determine the validity of the posted information. That same analysis reveals 1,450 valid U.S. government email addresses were used to register with the website – the most of any other country.
However, the safeguards wouldn’t block people from using personal devices to put work email addresses on the site.
According to a security blog, eight of those accounts were tied to government email in South Carolina.
Cheating on your spouse with the protection of a discreet site is what drew millions of users to Ashley Madison.
“The services are looking into it, as well they should be, absolutely”. “We are continuing to fully cooperate with law enforcement to seek to hold the guilty parties accountable to the strictest measures of the law”.
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But the breach could harm more than just would-be adulterers whose names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, payment information and other details were leaked online.
