In July , an unknown person or group calling itself "The Impact Team" announced that they had stolen user data of Ashley Madison , a commercial website billed as enabling extramarital affairs. The hackers copied personal information about the site's user base and threatened to release names and personal identifying information if Ashley Madison would not immediately shut down. To underscore the validity of the threat, personal information of more than 2, users was released.
Ashley Madison denied that its records were insecure and continued to operate. Because of the site's lack of adequate security and practice of not deleting personal information from its database โ including real names, home addresses, search history and credit card transaction records โ many users feared being publicly shamed. On 18 and 20 August, more than 60 gigabytes of additional data was publicly released, including user details.
This included personal information about users who had paid the site to delete their personal information showing that the data was not deleted. The Impact Team announced the attack on 19 July and threatened to expose the identities of Ashley Madison's users if its parent company, Avid Life Media, did not shut down Ashley Madison and its sister site, "Established Men". On 20 July , the Ashley Madison website put up three statements under its "Media" section addressing the breach.
The website's normally busy Twitter account fell silent apart from posting the press statements. At this time, we have been able to secure our sites, and close the unauthorized access points. We are working with law enforcement agencies, which are investigating this criminal act. Any and all parties responsible for this act of cyber-terrorism will be held responsible. More than 2, customer records were released by "The Impact Team" on 21 July, but the company initially denied the claim that its main database was insecure and had been hacked.
In its message, the group blamed Avid Life Media, accusing the company of deceptive practices: "We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data Too bad for ALM, you promised secrecy but didn't deliver.
