Popular adult cheating site AshleyMadison had been under attack by a group of hackers who are threatening to release information on the users of the site. The group, identified as The Impact Team, has already leaked huge caches of data stolen from AshleyMadison, KrebsOnSecurity reported.
"The data released by the hacker or hackers - which self-identify as The Impact Team - includes sensitive internal data stolen from Avid Life Media (ALM), the Toronto-based firm that owns AshleyMadison as well as related hookup sites Cougar Life and Established Men," the site added.
Noel Biderman, ALM boss, had confirmed the report, saying that the firm is "'working diligently and feverishly' to take down ALM's intellectual property." Soon enough, some of the links leading to the leaks no longer worked. As such, the alleged list of users and other sensitive information may be impossible to find now.
Biderman has since denounced the act as "criminal."
"Besides snippets of account data apparently sampled at random from among some 40 million users across ALM's trio of properties, the hackers leaked maps of internal company servers, employee network account information, company bank account data and salary information," KrebsOnSecurity explained.
Further, Reuters reported that ALM suspected that the culprit of the hack is "someone who had access to internal networks."
"It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services," Biderman was quoted as saying.
The hackers had left behind a post that revealed the group's demands. Although it had since been taken down, screenshots of the post had been captured by a number of media outlets.
"Shutting down AM (Ashley Madison) and EM (Established Men) will cost you, but non-compliance will cost you more," the hacker's post read, as relayed by Gizmodo. "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. Avid Life Media will be liable for fraud and extreme harm to millions of users."
The group went on to describe AshleyMadison as "the internet's #1 cheating site, for people who are married or in a relationship to have an affair." EM is an affiliated site, described as "a prostitution/human trafficking website for rich men to pay for sex."
On Twitter, Brian Krebs, the blogger who first reported of the hack, said that the hackers had sent him "direct links" to the data leaked online.
"I'm not republishing them because I don't wish to be party to their extortion," he tweeted in response to an inquiry.
Gizmodo said that the Impact Team's issue with ALM "seems to lie with the Full Delete feature offered by AshleyMadison-a $19 service that allows users of the site to erase their profile, and all accompanying information." This claim has since been debunked by the hackers as false as purchase details and other information are not really removed "as promised."
AshleyMadison has since apologized for the hack; ALM has also announced it had hired a "top IT security team" to deal with the hack.
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