Hackers of Ashley Madison, online dating site for cheating spouses, leaked substantial data on Tuesday, 30 days after they made a threat to Avid Life Media Inc. The users' information included full names, street addresses and some credit card information.
Many would remember that the Impact Team wanted the company to shutdown AshleyMadison.com. The company immediately launched an investigation as the issue went silent after a while.
Now that the time is up and hackers' acquired information was leaked, will the company give in to the hackers' demands? It appears that Avid Life Media Inc. still holds their ground.
"We have now learned that the individual or individuals responsible for this attack claim to have released more of the stolen data," the company said in a released statement.
"We will continue to put forth substantial efforts into removing any information unlawfully released to the public, as well as continuing to operate our business.
Dave Kennedy, chief executive of TrustedSec, said that the database dump appeared to be legitimate. Los Angeles Times learned that the dump uploaded in the so-called dark web, sites that use encryption tools to preserve anonymity, amounted to 10 GB compressed data.
The hackers also wanted the company to take down Ashley Madison's sister site, EstablishedMen.com, according to USA Today.
Amid the controversies on the authenticity of the leaked users' information, a blog posted on The Slate stated that Gawker reporter Sam Biddle came forward right away claiming it was real.
He posted on Twitter, "it's definitely real, I made an account on AM once when I was covering online dating stuff for gizmodo and my email is in there."
it’s definitely real, I made an account on AM once when I was covering online dating stuff for gizmodo and my email is in there
— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) August 19, 2015
There were 15,019 accounts linked to .mil and .gov email addresses, as per the report of CSO.
"This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality," the company added in its released statement.
"It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities," the statement continued.
