Toronto police to update investigation into Ashley Madison hack

The Toronto police department held a press-conference today to announce the new reward for the cyber-crime, the department also stated that at least two former Ashley Madison clients have reportedly committed suicide following the hack.

“The subscribers were purchasing a service from Ashley Madison, and the main ingredient of the service was confidentiality and anonymity in using the website“.

Evans addressed the hackers directly, saying their actions are “illegal and will not be tolerated”.

The press conference also provided further information on the timeline of the breach. “We’re talking about their children, we’re talking about their wives, we’re talking about their male partners”, Bryce told reporters.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that two people in Toronto have killed themselves over the Ashley Madison hack, local police said in a briefing providing details about the beginning of the leak. Among them are “hack checking” websites that compile the emails of the curious entered into them and then send malicious software to those emails. “He joined the website for a short time in search of companionship but never met anybody in person from the site”, the law firms said in a news release.

The police also confirmed that some credit card information was released, although that may have only included the last four digits of customers’ cards.

Ashley Madison did not respond to requests for comment.

A month later, the hackers behind the breach, released a enormous file online containing the email and home address of the 37 million people registered on the site.

Speaking to the Impact Team, Evans said “this is your wake-up call”, adding law enforcement have some good leads and the investigation is “progressing in a positive fashion”.

Toronto police along with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Ontario Provincial Police, US Homeland Security and the American FBI are investigating the hack, dubbing the probe “Project Unicorn”. They are outraged that AshleyMadison.com failed to protect its users’ information.

One potentially Ashley Madison-related death was reported late last week in San Antonio, Texas, where three city employees’ email addresses were found in the list of accounts.