Ashley Madison Hack Latest Update: Hackers Threaten to Expose Users, Spam Links Proliferate
After the unauthorized entry to AshleyMadison.com July 20, the group that hacked the online site that encourages affairs threatened to release supposedly private information of its 37 million users. Data include names, sexual fantasies and credit card numbers.
The attack on the Ashley Madison site was revealed earlier this month by Brian Krebs, computer security blogger. He identified the group named as the Impact Team, reports Tech Worm. Krebs stated that he had viewed and verified some of the data stolen by the group. The Impact Team posted bits of information that was obtained from a website called Pastebin. They claimed that they would publicize the rest of the data that they have on hand unless Ashley Madison site is closed down by its owner the Avid Life Media.
However, as reported by News Everyday, Avid Life Media were quick to implement actions that involved taking down and removing the shared data by the hackers. They said that no information has been shared online since then.
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Spammers were then reportedly capitalizing on the situation, which has resulted to the spread of spam links. Such links were posted on sites like Slexy and Pastebin with claims that the link contain information on users who have utilized the Ashley Madison site.
BBC investigated the spam issue and found out that many of these links contain fraudulent pages, fake data and malware on the Internet. There were also links that led to pages that asked visitors to fill in a survey, sign up for an expensive mobile game or watch videos before they access the data.
BBC was also able to download a small number of files that were hundreds of megabytes in size. But as soon as they were opened, it was revealed that it only contained files streamed with photos, videos and text grabbed from a religious site displaying gruesome detail to what happens to "sinners, adulterers and fornicators in hell".
"Spammers will always try to abuse any trend to get some free exposure, and this Ashley Madison leak is no exception. It is hard for us to remove everything, but we do actively search for such posts," Pastebin head Jeroen Vader said.
