Bad to worse.
The Ashley Madison hack has arguably been the most discussed news story of the week as the fallout from the hack on the extramarital website has encompassed not only normal Irish citizens but ir also contains emails linking back to RTE, the Gardai and the Oireachtas.
I’d wager that any users of the affair-arranging website haven’t been sleeping easily recently and this latest news won’t make their situation any easier.
The hackers behind the breach, who call themselves The Impact Team, have been in contact with the website Motherboard via e-mail and revealed their raison d’etre for the hack and also further details of the info that they have.
M: What other data from Avid Life Media do you have?
I.T: 300GB of employee emails and docs from internal network. Tens of thousands of Ashley Madison user pictures. Some Ashley Madison user chats and messages. 1/3 of pictures are dick pictures and we won’t dump. Not dumping most employee emails either. Maybe other executives.
M: What do you think about Avid Life Media’s (and CEO Noel Biderman’s) reaction?
I.T: They make $100,000,000 in fraud a year. Not very surprised they didn’t shut down. Maybe lawyers can shut them down now. They sound like politicians, cannot stop lying. They said they don’t store CC [credit card information]. Sure, they don’t store email either, they just log in every day to server and read. They had password to CC processor. We dumped from CC processor.
M: What were your motivations for the hack?
I.T: We were in Avid Life Media a long time to understand and get everything. Finally we watched Ashley Madison signups growing and human trafficking on the sites. Everyone is saying 37 million! Blackmail users! We didn’t blackmail users. Avid Life Media blackmailed them. But any hacking team could have. We did it to stop the next 60 million. Avid Life Media is like a drug dealer abusing addicts.
M:Will The Impact Team be hacking any other sites in the future? If so, what targets or sort of targets do you have in mind?
I.T: Not just sites. Any companies that make 100s of millions profiting off pain of others, secrets, and lies. Maybe corrupt politicians. If we do, it will be a long time, but it will be total.
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