LONDON, Aug. 19 (Marilyn Malara) — Hackers of the extramarital affair site Ashley Madison have reportedly followed through with their threat to publish user data online.
A 9.7 gigabyte data dump posted to the dark web Tuesday was uploaded using an .onion address which is only accessible through covert internet browser, Tor, Wired reports.
The card data, account details and usernames of at least 32 million Ashley Madison customers are included in the leaked information.
Ashley Madison — an Avid Life Media website — was hacked in July reportedly in protest of the site’s leaver’s fee which deletes all the data of those wishing to depart from the site, Telegraph reports. Avid Life Media (ALM) also runs Cougar Life and Established Men — two other specialty dating sites.
“This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality,” ALM said in a statement. “It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities.”
“The criminal, or criminals, involved in this act have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society.”
“We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world,” the statement concludes. “We are counting to fully co-operate with law enforcement to hold the guilty parties accountable to the strictest measures of the law.”
