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 After threatening to release salacious details on as many as 37
million customers of the website, which uses the slogan "Life is
short. Have an affair," hackers claimed to publish a huge cache of
email addresses and credit card data stolen in July.
Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the authenticity of the
posting. Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison and Established
Men, widely described as a "sugar daddy site," did not verify the
data was real, but said it was aware of the claim.
The hackers used the dark web which is only accessible using a
specialized browser.
Still within hours, thousands of email addresses from North America
and Europe including many linked to corporations and universities
sprouted up on other sites as people decrypted the database. It is
possible to create an Ashley Madison account using someone else's
name and email.
The hackers have appointed themselves as "the moral judge, juror,
and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on
all of society," the company said in a statement.
"These are illegitimate acts that have real consequences for
innocent citizens who are simply going about their daily lives," it
said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the theft
alongside the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and local police, it
said.
The hackers, who call themselves The Impact Team, leaked snippets of
the compromised data in July and threatened to publish names and
nude photos and sexual fantasies of customers unless Ashley Madison
and another site owned by Avid Life were taken down.
"Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and
Established Men," tech website Wired quoted The Impact Team as
saying in a statement accompanying the online dump.
"We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM (Avid
Life Media) and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data,"
the hackers said, according to Wired.
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Other higher-profile attacks such as those on big companies, like
Sony Pictures Entertainment and Target, have seen credit card data
of customers stolen, unleashing massive financial damage to
individuals and companies.
But this data dump appeared to confirm that the hackers were not
driven by blackmail or commercial motives, but rather ideological
ones.
The intrusion into the private lives of individuals marked a
watershed moment in cyber crime as the data spread across the web,
said Ajay K. Sood, General Manager for Canada of cyber security firm
FireEye Inc.
"These guys want as much notoriety as possible. This isn't cyber
terrorism. It's cyber vigilantism," he said.
Avid Life has said it is convinced the hackers were formerly
connected to the company.
Still the dump was massive, according to Troy Hunt, a Microsoft
security expert, who said more than 1 million unique email addresses
were attached to payment records.
Wired said 9.7 gigabytes of data was posted, and appeared to include
member account and credit card details.
Toronto-based cybersecurity firm Cycura, which was hired by Avid
Life to investigate the attack, said it was not authorized to speak
on the matter.
(Reporting by Alastair Sharp and Josephine Mason; Editing by Alan
Crosby)
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