AdultFriendFinder Hacked, 400 Million User Accounts Stolen

14 May AdultFriendFinder Hacked, 400 Million User Accounts Stolen

It’s important to note that Ashley Madison’s sign-up process does not require verification of an email address to set up an account, so legitimate addresses might have been hijacked and used by some members of the site. One email in the data dump, for example, appears to belong to former UK Prime Minister . The hackers deflected responsibility for any damages or repercussions that victims of the breach and data dump may suffer. Data belongs to dating site MeetMindful and includes everything from real names to Facebook account tokens, and from email addresses and geo-location information. Nevertheless, since 2001, Ashley Madison has steadily grown to 37 million accounts, according to a figure advertised on the front page of the website.

Along with some user profiles, Impact Team also released some internal network maps, employee details and salary information, and company bank account data. For instance, the security consultant Robb reported that one person whose information was hacked was a 62-year-old Hispanic male from New Jersey, who worked in advertising and has a preference for the “subporno” forum. That, combined with his username and other account details, gave Robb enough information to Google him, find his real name, and find his social media pages.

Why infidelity is a personal affair

Millions of others remain unnamed for now, but anyone can open the files — which remain freely available online. That could allow anyone to extort Adult FriendFinder customers. Already, some of the adult website’s customers are being identified by name. The encrypted-email company, popular with security-conscious users, has a plan to go mainstream. It’s notable, however, that the cheating site, in using the secure hashing algorithm, surpassed many other victims of breaches we’ve seen over the years who never bothered to encrypt customer passwords.

“We have already begun working closely with law enforcement and have launched a comprehensive investigation with the help of leading third-party forensics expert. An Iranian APT group ran a hacking campaign to hack VPN servers and install backdoors or bugs to access networks of firms across the globe. Passwords from Shadi.com are reported to be in clear text format, but MuslimMatch.com has passwords that are encrypted with hashed with MD5, a hashing algorithm which can be easily decrypted. Security researchers noted that dating apps in particular represent a highly attractive target for cybercriminals. MeetMindful combines a dating platform with a focus on wellness, life-coach articles, “intentional living” tips and musings on spirituality. Receive a selection of our best stories daily based on your reading preferences.

EstablishedMen.com promises to connect beautiful young women with rich sugar daddies “to fulfill their lifestyle needs.” The hackers didn’t target CougarLife, a sister site run by ALM that promises to connect older women with younger men. The leak of this highly sensitive data represents a looming issue for the site’s users and the main reason why MeetMindful needs to notify account holders. Martin Bryant is founder of Big Revolution, where he helps tech companies refine their proposition and positioning, and develops high-quality, compelling content for them. He previously served in several roles at TNW, including Editor-in-Chief. Shaun Harper is one of those whose details have been published.

The Ashley Madison hack, explained

Each contribution has a goal of bringing a unique voice to important cybersecurity topics. Content strives to be of the highest quality, objective and non-commercial. It’s unclear how ShinyHunters were able to access the site’s data, but cybersecurity expert and CTO of Cymulate Avihai Ben-Yossef suspects a cloud misconfiguration. The 412 million accounts go back 20 years, it says, and the lion’s share comes from AdultFriendFinder — almost 340 million.

The site could not confirm how many account were affected, but said it was temporarily disabling features including search functions to protected possibly compromised accounts. A dating website that helps married people cheat has been hit by hackers who threatened to release information about millions of customers. Within the database appears to be over 10,000 US military email addresses and 100s of US government addresses. A collection of internal Ashley Madison communications were also included, which appear to suggest that the site’s senior staff were concerned about the possibilities of a hacking attack. “I’ve now spoken with three vouched sources who all have reported finding their information and last four digits of their credit card numbers in the leaked database,” said Brian Krebs, who broke the news of the original hack.

Several thousand U.S. .mil and .gov email addresses were registered on the site. In the days following the breach, extortionists began targeting people whose details were included in the leak, attempting to scam over US$200 worth of Bitcoins from them. Because of the site’s policy of not deleting users’ personal information – including real names, home addresses, search history and credit card transaction records – many users feared being publicly shamed. The ShinyHunters hacking group has stolen and published the personally identifiable data of MeetMindful users, according to a report from ZDNet. The data has been made available as a free download on a “publicly accessible hacking forum known for its trade in hacked databases,” according to a security researcher speaking anonymously to the outlet.

The real surprise is what was going on behind the scenes in August 2015, when, from the outside, Ashley Madison appeared to be collapsing. “A lot of members say we give them a way to keep their marriage alive,” is Keable’s answer. “A lot of members are happy with their husbands and wives in general. But there’s something missing from an intimacy standpoint that they’re unwilling to live without. They’re told live without it or get a divorce—we offer a third path.”

In May this year, Adult Friend Finder was breached, with sensitive data pertaining to 4 million users finding its way onto the Internet. Back in 2013, Cupid Media, which runs a number of online dating websites, was breached by hackers;42 million plaintext passwords were released as a result. On January 21, 2011, it was discovered that the Plenty of Fish website had been hacked which exposed the personal and password information on nearly 30 million user accounts. Since the alleged hacking incident, Frind alleges he has identified persons he believes are responsible for the hacking, and alleges he is threatening legal action in response to the widespread negative media exposure. At the time this received global media exposure and security experts blamed Plenty of Fish for the security and privacy lapse specifically for keeping users’ passwords unsecured.

Israeli Business Websites hacked by Z Company Hacking Crew

Hackers say they’ll release data from 37 million profiles unless site shuts down. After all, its databases have enormous potential for use in blackmail schemes. “I could have created an account at Ashley Madison with the address of , but it wouldn’t have meant that Obama was a user of the site,” explained independent security researcher Graham Cluley. On 24 August 2015, Toronto police announced that two unconfirmed suicides had been linked to the data breach, in addition to “reports of hate crimes connected to the hack.” Unconfirmed reports say a man in the U.S. died by suicide. At least one suicide, which was previously linked to Ashley Madison, has since been reported as being due to “stress entirely related to issues at work that had no connection to the data leak”. The Impact Team announced the attack on 19 July 2015 and threatened to expose the identities of Ashley Madison’s users if its parent company, Avid Life Media, did not shut down Ashley Madison and its sister site, “Established Men”.

“There’s a lot of speculation,” he says, much more wary now than earlier. In addition, Avid Life Media stated that the “full delete” feature does fully expunge user data from the database, contrary https://hookupgenius.com/tendermeets-review/ to the claims of the Impact Team. So far, though, it isn’t easy to find the exposed cheaters online. That could change soon if the hackers decide to publish the information on a public website.

Top data security expert fears traumatic aftermath in Ashley Madison hack

The hack follows a similar event in March, when more than 3.5 million people’s sexual preferences, fetishes and secrets were exposed after dating site Adult FriendFinder was hacked. Several security researchers have been analysing the data and are suggesting that the database is real and contains the personal details of real Ashley Madison members. In a 2019 interview, Ashley Madison’s chief strategy officer Paul Keable confirmed the installment of security features like two-factor verification, PCI compliance and fully-encrypted browsing as a consequence of the hacker attack from 2015. More than 3.5 million people’s sexual preferences, fetishes and secrets have been exposed after dating site Adult FriendFinder was hacked. To show they meant business, they posted sample files containing some of the stolen data, which included company financial information detailing employee salaries and documents mapping the company’s internal network.