The Ashley Madison Hack
Hacking almost always results in the release of personal information. Whether that be credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other sensitive data, leaks happen all the time. In the case of the Ashley Madison hack, more than just personal information was leaked. In fact, over 2,500 users of the website, Ashley Madison, had their extramarital affairs exposed to the world.
In case you don’t know, Ashley Madison is a website that advertises itself as a networking platform for affairs. Their tag line is ‘Life Is Short. Have An Affair’ which is a pretty complete summary of this platform.
In 2015 they had a hacking incident at the hands of an unidentified group that calls themselves The Impact Team. A list was released that included the full names, home addresses, search history, and credit card transactions of over 2,500 users. But this was only the initial release. Only a month later (August 2015) another 12.7 gigabytes of data was published. This set of data included corporate emails from the parent company of Ashley Madison, Avid Life Media.
This hack didn’t just start with a massive data dump. The Impact Team began with threats pointed at Avid Life media on July 19th. They promised to expose user identities if Avid Life didn’t shut down their websites, Ashley Madison and Established Men. Avid Life came out with a statement reassuring users that their site was secure and offering to waive the account deletion charge for those users still concerned. But only two days after the initial threat, the leak was published. Following the leak, Ashely Madison suffered a string of lawsuits related to the breach resulting in a settlement of around $11.2 million.
The internet was quick to start combing through the list exposing celebrities, government officials, and military members alike. A search engine was even published to allow people to search for their spouse. The leak also resulted in the exposed users suffering threats from other hackers claiming that their data would be further exposed if they didn’t send payment.
It turns out that the hackers were able to easily access this data because the site had a bad habit of not deleting old accounts and information. General insecure practices led to their downfall. Still, despite the massive data breach, the site is still active today.
This hack was the first of its kind. Thousands of users suffered from a double whammy. Not only was their personal information exposed but entire affairs were published for everyone to see. The initial shock of the hack was followed by support from large communities throughout the internet but since then many people have come forward to criticize the hacking group. Most argue that the public shaming that users suffered only further hurt their spouses and children.
The hacking group, The Impact Team, was never prosecuted for the hack because law enforcement wasn’t able to connect any individuals to the hack or the group itself. It still goes unsolved today. The only updates the public has received come from the Netflix documentary released earlier this this year. Entitled Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, & Scandal, the show has three parts and works through how the hack took place and why the outcome was so detrimental to users.
