Ashley Madison, a website that links up people seeking affairs, was hacked along with its partner sites, potentially exposing data on millions of users.
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A group of hackers going by “The Impact Team” took the user information for all 40 million members on the Avid Life Media (ALM) network, which also includes Cougar Life and Established Men, according to Krebs on Security. Ashley Madison claim that for $20 they will do a “full delete” and clear all a user’s information but the hackers claim the website keeps personal details including addresses and purchase details. The hackers appeared to be incensed over ALM’s “Full Delete” policy, which states that the company will remove all traces of a customer’s account for $19.
The hackers say the website and its sibling services must be shut down – or they will release “all customer records, profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures, and conversations and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails”.
“Shutting down AM and EM will cost you, but non-compliance will cost you more”, they begin.
Avid Life Media’s chief executive confirmed to information security journalist Brian Krebs that the leak was genuine. “We immediately launched a thorough investigation utilizing leading forensics experts and other security professionals to determine the origin, nature, and scope of this incident”, the company said in its initial statement.
As proof, they published a random sampling of user accounts, as well as internal company information like salaries and bank-account numbers. Keable said at Avid Life’s midtown Toronto offices, citing articles in what he called “major media outlets”.
“I’ve got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials”. By Monday afternoon, it said it had closed unauthorized access points and “successfully removed” identifying information about users that was already published online.
This is not your ordinary credit card data breach.
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The hackers demanded the closure of another of Avid Life Media’s sites, sugar-daddy site “Established Men“, but did not target the company’s “CougarLife” site, which caters to women members looking for “a young stud”. “It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services”. Most of the time there is a breach in the security and such info, if gotten hold of by wrong people, then can be used to blackmail and extortion.
