The hack is understood to be a protest over the charging of a leavers’ fee to users to completely delete all their data.
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Avid Life Media, the company that owns the extramarital dating site AshleyMadison.com, confirmed Wednesday that some of the data released by hackers is legitimate – but that the company never stored credit card information on its servers.
“This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality”, a statement said.
Although the validity of the published data has been questioned, Krebs On Security said, after checking with three vouched sources, “there is every indication this dump is the real deal”. The information that was posted included customer names and credit card numbers, Thorsheim said.
The hackers, who call themselves the Impact Team, demanded that Avid Life Media take down the site as well as the companion site EstablishedMen.com, which “promises to connect handsome young women with rich sugar daddies”. The hackers also didn’t immediately return emails. “There are much simpler ways to confirm their suspicions”.
Other websites which do not include the words Ashley Madison in their url remain active.
The online dating site is for people interested in cheating on their significant others. “We need to start controlling things a little more”.
The French leak monitoring firm CybelAngel said it counted 1,200 email addresses in the data dump with the.sa suffix, suggesting users were connected to Saudi Arabia, where adultery is punishable by death. Yesterday, almost 10 gigabytes of that stolen data was released, including the profiles (including descriptions of what members were seeking), email addresses, and credit card transactions of members of the website at the time of the initial hacking.
“It’s not that dumb”, Damuseau said.
Ashley Madison’s signup process does not require verification of an email address to set up an account.
“Have an affair today on Ashley Madison“. The websites were not taken down and the hackers released data this week. “Keep in mind the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles”, read a note titled “Time’s Up”, which was posted along with the Ashley Madison information.
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Thieves, involved with this work have hired themselves whilst the ethical judge, or “The legal, executioner, and juror”, the organization said.
