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Ashley Madison is currently under investigation by the FTC
Infamous infidelity website Ashley Madison is now under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, according to a report from Reuters.
Ashley Madison insists that real women use its affair service
That Gizmodo investigation of leaked data suggesting that most of the women on Ashley Madison's affair-seeking service were fake? Completely bogus... if you ask Ashley Madison. It claims that there are plenty of real live women on the site -- the ratio of paying men to active women (who get to use it for free) is reportedly 1.2 to 1, and women sent 2.8 million messages just in the past week. Gizmodo made "incorrect assumptions" about what some of the data fields meant, Ashley Madison says. Whether or not that's true, you'll want to keep the data in context. The service isn't outlining the ratio of real to fake women, so it's not clear whether real women are bountiful or needles in the proverbial haystack.
Leaked data shows women on Ashley Madison were mostly fake
It's no secret that Ashley Madison has fake female profiles to engage users -- heck, it's even noted in the ToS that the website "is geared to provide you with amusement and entertainment." When its user data was leaked to the public, though, people got a chance to see just how many women there are on the website exactly, and how many of them are definitely fake. Gizmodo editor-in-chief Annalee Newitz took a closer look at the data dump in an effort to determine the site's female population and found that barely any of the 5.5 million profiles marked as "female" actually used the website.
Ashley Madison offers $376,000 bounty to help find hackers
The Impact Life hackers might not release any more data they stole from adultery-enabling site Ashley Madison, but the legal investigation into who exactly is responsible for the security breach is just getting started. As reported by The Independent, Ashely Madison's parent company Avid Life Media (ALM) is offering a $500,000 (in Canadian dollars, about $376,000 US as of this writing) reward for any information leading to "identification, arrest and prosecution" of those responsible for the hack. It's the first major step that ALM is making to find out what happened to its data, and it's also a very public confirmation that the data Impact Life stole is legit. High-profile security researchers had said as much in the days immediately following the hack, but the initial statement from Ashley Madison was a bit less concrete.
Ashley Madison hackers bash the site's security practices in Q&A
Impact Team, the hackers that stole a massive amount of data from infidelity hookup site Ashley Madison earlier this week, have come forward to tell their side of the story. In an email Q&A with Motherboard, the hack's perpetrators first and foremost shamed Ashley Madison's parent company Avid Life Media for the lax security that made such a hack a surprisingly simple matter. "We worked hard to make fully undetectable attack [sic]," Impact Team said, "then got in and found nothing to bypass." The hackers further called the security levels "bad," saying that "nobody was watching" and there was "no security" to speak of. The fact that Ashley Madison isn't the most secure site out there isn't news, but it's still a bit shocking to see just how cavalier a site that makes its living trading on infidelity is about protecting customer info.
The latest Ashley Madison data release is twice as big as the first
It looks like the Ashley Madison hackers aren't done releasing data they pilfered from the company in July. As reported by Motherboard, another set of data has been posted on the same "Dark Web" site that hosted the original release. The data dump is accompanied by a statement that reads "Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now" -- a reference to Avid Life (Ashley Madison's parent company) CEO Noel Biderman. The release also includes the same PGP key that was used by the Impact Team hackers when they released the first round of data.
Hackers dump stolen Ashley Madison data onto the Dark Web
Impact Team, the hacking collective that recently made headlines by absconding with the personal data of some 37 million customers, has made good on previous threats to release the information. On Tuesday, the group dumped 9.7 GB worth of data onto the Dark Web, a semi-anonymized corner of the Internet only accessible using a special Tor browser and Onion router. The data set appears to include account details and log-ins as well as credit card and payment transaction details. The hackers reportedly pulled the data from Ashley Madison's servers despite the company offering a $19 "Full Delete" service that supposedly scrubbed former users' data from the site.
Ashley Madison hack threatens to expose millions of users
Ashley Madison, the dating website that purports to connect people looking for an affair, has been the victim of a hack that has exposed the personal data of its 37 million users. Krebs on Security is reporting that the perpetrators are a hacker or hackers going by the name of Impact Team. So far, only a small selection of information has been uploaded, but the group is threatening to post the entire haul unless Ashley Madison and sister site Established Men are shut down for good. CEO Noel Biderman has confirmed that the attack is legitimate and has pledged to take down compromising files as they're found online. Not that it's likely to be much comfort to the people waking up to find their personal details splashed across the internet.
Ashley Madison IPO proves Adultery is big business
It may sound like a high-end department store, but Ashley Madison is actually a hookup network for people who want some extra-marital, no-strings attached sex. As much as we pretend that the site caters to a small niche, the truth is that its parent company is struggling to keep up with the demand. That's why it's reportedly preparing to go public in the hope of raising $200 million to fund international expansion.
