AshleyMadison.com is an online dating website that particularly targets people looking to have an extramarital affair. Recently, AshleyMadison hacked by a group of hackers that calls itself Impact Team and has threatened the ALM group that they should take the site offline permanently. The hackers have leaked a small amount of data, including user profiles, financial records of the company and “other proprietary information.”
Ashley Madison charges users $19 to completely delete their profile from the site, but the Impact Team claims that the details of the users were not actually deleted from the database.
AshleyMadison hacked and the hackers demanded as follows:
“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.”
AshleyMadison hacked was confirmed by Noel Bilderman, ALM’s CEO with KrebsOnSecurity, but he did not discuss about the extent of the breach. He indicated that the incident may have been the work of someone who had inside access to the company’s networks or maybe a former employee or contractor. There are more than 37 million users of the site and this breach could have great impact on their personal lives.
AshleyMadison hacked by Impact Team, but now ALM claims that it has been able to secure its sites. However, files containing the profile details of AshleyMadison users have started spreading online. Three months ago, a similar site called Adult Friend Finder was also hacked and personal information of more than 3.5 million users was stolen from the website.