Ashley Madison
Ashley Madison founder Noel Biderman demonstrates his website on a tablet computer during an interview in Hong Kong August 28, 2013. Founded in 2002, Ashley Madison, the world's biggest online dating website for married men and women, has over 20 million users in 30 regions all over the world. Reuters/Bobby Yip

Extramarital dating site Ashley Madison has been hacked recently. Now, millions of users' information are potentially at risk of exposure.

Avid Life Media said in a published statement on Monday that it is aware that an unauthorised party attempted to get access to their systems. "At this time, we have been able to secure our sites, and close the unauthorized access points," the company said in the statement. "We are working with law enforcement agencies, which are investigating this criminal act. Any and all parties responsible for this act of cyber-terrorism will be held responsible."

The hack was exposed by security blogger Brian Krebs. He reported that the breach was the work of The Impact Team. The group said Ashley Madison does not delete the information of its users once they decide to leave the website. This is contrary to Ashley Madison’s rule of deleting an account of all its information after the user pays a fee.

The hacking group is reportedly threatening to publish all the stored information on the website unless Avid Life Media gives in to its threat and decides to take down Ashley Madison and EstablishedMen.com. The hacked info reportedly includes stolen customer records such as real names, addresses and credit card transactions as well as internal documents and emails.

Avid Life Media apologised for the breach, adding that no company's online assets are safe from cyber-vandalism in the current business world. The website was criticised back in 2012 in an Electronic Frontier Foundation report, which focused on websites' privacy and security practices.

Ashley Madison, which tagline is "Life is short. Have an affair," is a dating website for married people. Simply put, it is a site that lets people “cheat” on their spouse. The service was launched in 2001, and it claims to have over 37 million members. The website is owned by Avid Life Media, a Toronto-based company that also owns CougarLife.com and EstablishedMen.com. This data breach came just two months after Adult FriendFinder was hacked. Millions of member’s details were exposed by the hackers of the site.

To contact the writer, please email jonasunico@gmail.com.

RELATED STORIES