Ashley Madison hack: Live updates as ‘UK Government email addresses’ in data

Users of adultery site Ashley Madison beware: some of your personal information may be viewable online.

Avid Life Media, the company behind infidelity website AshleyMadison.com, confirmed on Wednesday that some legitimate data has been stolen from it and published online, but said it has never stored credit card information on its servers.

The release comes a month after data was stolen by hackers identified as the “Impact Team” who allegedly tried to shut the site for cheaters down “immediately permanently”.

“If people in sensitive government positions are using government email addresses to register on such a sensitive website, then clearly it raises serious questions about their judgment”.

The hack is understood to have been provoked by the site charging a leaver’s fee for users wishing to completely delete all their account details.

The company said it was still investigating the validity of any information posted online from its site and was working to remove any data posted unlawfully. AshleyMadison.com claimed to have almost 40 million users at the time of the breach about a month ago, all apparently in the market for clandestine hookups.

In a statement published alongside the dump this week by the Impact Team, “Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men. Keep in mind the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles”, the read-me note said. The data included login details, email addresses, payment transaction details and encrypted passwords for members of Ashley Madison and Established Men, widely described as a “sugar daddy site”.

Avid Life Media condemned the breach in a statement to WIRED.

It has been reported that 1.2 million Ashley Madison users are British.

According to Trustify’s Danny Boice, he claims that they are getting about one search per second, and that there are just as many men using the tool as there are women.

“This dump appears to be legit”, said David Kennedy, CEO of information security company TrustedSec, which monitors cyber attacks, in a blog post. “Users are able to sign up to the site without responding to an email verification, meaning anyone’s email address could have been used to create an account”.

Thieves, involved with this work have hired themselves whilst the ethical judge, or “The legal, executioner, and juror”, the organization said.