“Life is short, have an affair,” is the eyebrow raising slogan of Ashley Madison’s website. The prolific dating site brings together married people all around the globe who are interested in having a “discreet encounter.” Brian Krebs, a security guru received information on the hack and posted it to his website. Krebs is also behind the public reveal of the Target hack which exposed more than 40 million customers. The newest hack team, calling themselves, the Impact Team, has threatened the website owners to bring down the site or face consequences.
Those consequences include leaking the names, addresses, secret fantasies and even credit card transactions of the website’s members. More than 30 million people access the site, making the hack a real threat to those who have a second life hidden from loved ones. The team also threatened to expose employees of the company.
The hacker team released a statement and said “too bad for those men, they’re cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion.” The website offers a $20 service which includes a history wipe. This would reportedly delete the entire footprint of the user, but the hacking team says that is a complete lie. They claim Ashley Madison acquired more than $1.7 million from this add-on fee and it does not work. The Impact Team is threatening to expose those users as well.
Krebs states the hack comes only two months from another adult site hack. Adult Friend Finder was hacked and more than 3 million members suffered information exposure. The site caters to those who live an alternate, sexual lifestyle. Discovered in the hack was information from an FAA employee, a Washington police academy commander and even a naval intelligence officer, who was looking to cheat on his wife. Officials have not confirmed if the hackers could be the same between the two sites. The below is the message users encountered when they accessed the site last week:
The site is operating normally at this time, but as imagined, less users will be inclined to sign up following the hack. Avid Life Media owns Ashley Madison and two additional dating sites. They released a statement following Krebs’ announcement of the hack:
The statement does little to shuttle the fear for married users who worry if they may receive notice their name, address, sexual preference for a partner, fetishes and credit card information is made online for review.
The Impact Team did release a small percentage of users information to various websites. Avid Life Media issued Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) notices to the sites with a strict warning to remove the information. Media sources claimed when they tried the links suggesting user information could be found, a 404 Page Not Found error now appears.