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Online cheating website Ashley Madison hacked, over 37 million users compromised

By Kenny Yeo - on 21 Jul 2015, 10:03am

Online cheating website Ashley Madison hacked, over 37 million users compromised

Image source: PC Authority.

Controversial online cheating website has been hacked and its perpetrators are demanding that Avid Life Media, the owners of Ashley Madison, take the site down along with its sister site Established Men.

The hackers have demanded the following:

"Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails. The other websites may stay online."

The group behind the hack is calling themselves "The Impact Team" and claims to have access to the database and personal information of Ashley Madison's 37 million or so users.

The intent behind the hack is to bring to light Ashley Madison's "Full Delete" option which purports to completely delete your profile, but for a fee of US$19. In turns out that this feature is not actually true and user details aren't actually being scrubbed.

The Impact Team said, "Full Delete netted ALM $1.7mm in revenue in 2014. It’s also a complete lie. Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed."

Avid Life Media's CEO Noel Biderman said investigations are ongoing and that they are on the doorstep of confirming who was behind the breach. He said, "We’re not denying this happened. Like us or not, this is still a criminal act. I’ve got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials. It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services."

Source: Krebs on Security

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