A Retrospective on the 2015 Ashley Madison Breach
Summary: Seven years after the July 2015 hack of AshleyMadison.com, KrebsOnSecurity reviewed pre-breach mentions of the site and found a Russian cybercrime forum user called Brutium offering to sell data on 32 million users in January 2015, alongside derisive posts on neo-Nazi sites targeting then-CEO Noel Biderman. The Impact Team leaked 60 gigabytes of user data on Aug. 18, 2015 after a 30-day ultimatum, citing Avid Life Media's $19 'full delete' service that did not scrub purchase details, and no one has been charged despite a $500,000 reward.
What's compelling: The breach led to public shaming and extortion of users and at least two suicides, and the promised 'full delete' that users paid $19 for left real names and addresses intact - a reminder that a privacy promise is only as good as the code behind it.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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