"Life is short. Have an affair," Ashley Madison's tagline reads. (Photo : Reuters)
A hacker group recently released about 9.7GB worth of sensitive user information stolen from the cheating website AshleyMadison.com.
Reuters reported that the stolen data was initially released on the dark web using an Onion address. Due to the complicated nature of the dark web, the data leaked were only accessible through the Tor browser.
According to Wired, the files contain log-in information of at least 32 million compromised Ashley Madison users. Credit card payment transaction details were also dumped, with some transactions dating as far back as 2007. Transaction details include names, addresses, email addresses and the amount of money paid. No credit numbers were included.
A close analysis of the leaked information shows that about 15,000 email addresses included in the dump were using .gov and .mil domain name. This analysis shows that a handful of military and government personnel were also involved in the infidelity website.
The hacker group calling themselves The Impact Team claims responsibility of the attack on Ashley Madison, a website that flaunts on its homepage a banner that reads "Ashley Madison is the most famous name in infidelity and married dating. With Our affair guarantee package we guarantee you will find the perfect affair partner."
The Impact Team initially made their threat known in July after the group posted a screenshot of compromised data. The group threatens to leak all the hacked data if Ashley Madison along with another cheating website EstablishedMen.com do not go offline.
AshleyMadison.com and EstablishedMen.com are owned by Avid Life Media. The company has yet to release a comment about the data dump.
