This past weekend Viral Global News released a story regarding the deep web which can be read here. It makes news again after the Impact Team, a hacker group, targeted and stole data from the extramarital affair site Ashley Madison. To access the deep web users would need to download the Tor browser and access the Onion address used by the Impact Team. In the 9.7 gigabytes of data - information pertaining to users; including credit card transactions, names, email addresses and street addresses were released.
The first “victim” has been identified as none other than Josh Duggar. Part of the now former TLC show, 19 Kids and Counting star is in deeper water than before when he admitted to molesting girls as a teen, including his sisters.
Duggar’s information joins more than 30 million other users of the “Life is Short. Have an Affair” site. The Impact Team threatened Ashley Madison to take down their site or face the consequences. The site, owned by Toronto-based Avid Life Media, defied the threats and kept the site running, resulting in the Impact Team turning to the deep web.
In July of this year the group released selected names on the surface web, but Avid Life Media issued DMCA takedown requests and the information was blocked. They are not so lucky in the world of the deep web.
Of course, there is always caution with believing everything seen on the net as well. Email addresses correlated to names does not mean that specific person signed up. Many celebrities may face scrutiny if someone unknowingly used their name as part of registration which requires no email confirmation. But, in the case of Duggar, Gawker released the credit card transactions and it appears to be tied to Duggar’s addresses. It also shares his personal desires.
Ashley Madison is trying to aim for some recovery following the data dump. The site released a statement advising the following:
This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality. It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities. The criminal, or criminals, involved in this act have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society.
Many users paid extra fees to ensure their identities were held in the highest form of security. The Impact Team previously called that a fallacy, and proved their case with the data dump.
Law enforcement agencies are collaborating in a massive investigation to determine the origin of the attack. Regardless of their efforts, the Impact Team has shown their commands were more than just a bluff. They executed the information as previously demonstrated and took to the deep web to ensure its maintained validity.