Ashley Madison, the dating website that purports to connect people looking for an affair, has been the victim of a hack that has exposed the personal data of its 37 million users. Krebs on Security is reporting that the perpetrators are a hacker or hackers going by the name of Impact Team. So far, only a small selection of information has been uploaded, but the group is threatening to post the entire haul unless Ashley Madison and sister site Established Men are shut down for good. CEO Noel Biderman has confirmed that the attack is legitimate and has pledged to take down compromising files as they're found online. Not that it's likely to be much comfort to the people waking up to find their personal details splashed across the internet.
It's believed that the hack was carried out because of a much-derided feature that the company offers called Full Delete. Should a user wish to leave the site, they can pay a $19 fee to have all of their personal data scrubbed from the Madison servers. There's only one catch: according to Impact Team, it's all a lie, and despite making $1.7 million from the service in 2014, the data remains safely preserved.
For his part, Biderman believes that the attack was an inside job and that he is close to confirming the identity of the culprit. Right now, it's thought that the person wasn't an employee, but someone who had "touched" the company's "technical services." That makes sense, since the Impact Team statement offers an apology to Mark Steele, the website's director of security.
At the time of publication, Ashley Madison remains online, but we imagine that we'll be spending the rest of the day updating this piece as new developments occur. Perhaps the company should change its tagline from "life is short, have an affair" to "it's all fun and games until everybody finds out."
[Image Credit: AFP/Getty Images]
Filed under: Internet
Via: FT
Source: Krebs on Security, PR Newswire
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