Hackers Post 10GB Stolen Data as Ashley Madison Stays Online

It has been a while since hackers attacked the online cheating site Ashley Madison where the hackers claimed that they had downloaded pretty much all relevant information about the users from the site. For those who don’t know it, Ashley Madison is an online dating site specifically designed and advertised to married people who want to cheat on their partner. A pure disgrace in my book that a site like that is allowed to stay online, but that is beside the point right now.

The hackers wanted the site to shut down and threatened to release the user data if that didn’t happen. The site didn’t give in to the blackmail as it looks to be a very lucrative operation, even though they’ve exposed for having 90-95% male profiles and most female profiles being faked by the company. I don’t think that women cheat less than men, perhaps they’re smarter about it.

Now the hackers have made good on their promise and released 10GB stolen data that includes not only usernames and emails, but also appears to contain credit card information to pay for the membership as well as many other personal information. While the site doesn’t verify the profiles in any way and it is possible to create fake profiles with any email you wish, it’s still scary how many government email addresses were found in the database.

Avid Life Media, the company behind Ashley Madison, condemned the release of the data with a statement: “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. We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world.”

All the information has been posted to the “Dark Web” that only can be accessed through the Tor browser. It will be interesting to see what new dirt will show up as experts dig through the data and decrypt the parts that were secured.

Thank You Wired for providing us with this information