Matchmaking website for cheaters hacked, personal info posted online

Avid Life Media (ALM), the company that owns AshleyMadison.com, a dating site for married people trying to have extramarital affairs, has been hacked.

The hackers, who called themselves the Impact Team, said they had managed to steal the real names and addresses of the site’s users, including those who had previously paid to “delete” their accounts. The hackers claim that the company made $1.7 million in revenue a year ago on that service, which it alleges doesn’t actually scrub personal information, Krebs reported.

According to web security blog Krebs on Security, a hacking group calling itself the “Impact Team” has already leaked a large trove of the hookup website’s data online.

Ashley Madison, an online cheating website, was recently hit by a hack that may have compromised the company’s information and that of more than 37 million users.

“Like us or not, this is still a criminal act”, Biderman said, according to Krebs.

“Our team of forensics experts and security professionals, in addition to law enforcement, are continuing to investigate this incident and we will continue to provide updates as they become available”, it said.

The site, which seductively advertises “Life is short”.

But the hackers said the credit card purchase details of former subscribers are not deleted, leaving that information vulnerable in the case of a data breach. The group states not all information is completely erased. Shutting down AM [Ashley Madison] and EM [Established Men] will cost you, but non-compliance will cost you more: We will release all customer-records, profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures, and conversations and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails.

“I’ve got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials”.

The company said it was able to secure their sites and close the unauthorized access points with the help of “one of the world’s top IT security teams”.

In an interview with Noel Biderman, CEO of Avid Life Media back in August 2013, he said that “the notion of monogamy goes against our DNA”, admitting that there’s no wonder why people “look to find comfort in the arms of another”. For now, it appears the hackers have published a relatively small percentage of AshleyMadison user account data and are planning to publish more for each day the company stays online.