The Ashley Madison database dump containing usernames, passwords, credit card details, street addresses and more has been verified by researchers as authentic, leading to major legal consequences for Avid Life Media (ALM) but also personal and professional consequences for the 33m users of the cheating website. Now everyone gets to see their data …
On Tuesday night, Ashley Madison’s chief technology officer, Raja Bhatia, gave an interview to tech blogger Brian Krebs claiming there’s no evidence that the data dump is the real deal-a murky stance the company has been trying to sell since the hack was revealed last month.
“This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality”, the company said in a statement.
You won’t immediately be able to determine the authenticity of the leaked files, although many analysts who have scanned the data believe they are genuine.
The personal details also included addresses, ages, phone numbers, credit card details and even sexual fantasies of users, prompting calls for an urgent review of government security. He said men outnumbered women on the service five-to-one. Whilst readers’ morals may conflict either seeing this group of hackers as good or bad guys, the fact remains that the Impact Team illegally obtained sensitive personal info.
A fascinating, zoomable online map created on mapping software Carto DB shows the global distribution of all the Ashley Madison users outed in the hack, with the red areas showing showing the highest concentration. “There are much simpler ways to confirm their suspicions”. What if the person they end up meeting on the site is someone they already know, or someone who knows their spouse?
Breakfast radio hosts Fitzy and Wippa put a call out on Thursday morning for any female listeners who suspected their partner might be cheating. The French leak monitoring firm CybelAngel said it counted 1,200 email addresses in the data dump with the.sa suffix, suggesting users were connected to Saudi Arabia, where adultery is punishable by death.