A hack of Ashley Madison, the infidelity dating site, exposed 32 to 40 million user records including names, emails, and credit card details. Cyber-security expert Robert Siciliano warns of identity theft, blackmail, and divorce fallout, plus national-security risks from exposed government and corporate accounts worldwide.
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Their slogan is, "Life is short, have an affair." But now the company behind that line could see that life is indeed short for an enterprise based on selling adultery on a global scale. CCTV's Jessica Stone has been looking into the leak of AshleyMadison.com files, and I guess lives all around the world being impacted, correct?
Absolutely, Mike. And with as many as 32 million customers at risk of being exposed as a result of this data breach, these are married people looking for affairs Just imagine the marriages and families that hang in the balance.
The website Ashley Madison makes no secret about what it's selling. Discreet cheating for married partners. But discretion went out the window after a group of so-called hacktivists exposed millions of user profiles and email addresses. Thousands with suffixes belonging to international governments militaries, and major corporations. Virtually no corner of the globe has gone untouched, from Hong Kong and Korea to Israel and Argentina to Canada, where the parent company Avid Life Media is based. Cybersecurity expert Robert Siciliano says people started contacting him last month when the breach was first uncovered.
Some of them hadn't put anything other than their real first and last name along with their credit card and their address. But they would also confess to me that they had talked about some of their fetishes, things that they did, what they were attracted to.
Ashley Madison boasts some 40 million users looking for affairs. Some signed up using email addresses in countries where adultery is punishable by death.
I think it has a lot to do with the compulsion. It has a lot to do with being so wrapped up in getting that sexual thrill that you throw caution to the side.
Siciliano says there's already an effort to create a searchable database so people can find out if their spouses are cheating, leading many to wonder about possible blackmail or a spike in divorce rates around the world.
When people are cheating, there's always the suspicion there. Uh, there are other signs that are going on. So something like being on this site and cheating on this site I think is just probably the tip of the iceberg.
Emails used to sign into the site were reportedly not verified, so it's likely that many of them could be fake. Nonetheless, Siciliano worries that this cybersecurity hack could turn into a series of national security breaches.
It's very important that governments reach out in regards to those .mils and .gov addresses to each and every person that, that they see may have been compromised and actually have their superiors sit down with them and have a discussion with them about what might take place.
And for its part, Avid Life Media, which is the parent company of Ashley Madison, tells Reuters news agency that no credit card numbers were ever stored on its servers. To the hackers, the company's statement reads in part, quote, this event is not an act of hacktivism. It is an act of criminality. It is an illegal action against the individual members of ashleymadison.com.
Mike, pretty wild story. And do we know much about the people who invented this website? Are they married?
Well, what's interesting is the inventor is married. He has been interviewed in a British newspaper, and he said he's been married for 10 years. But he also makes no secret that if he had a sexless marriage, that wouldn't be the case anymore. And he totally justifies what he calls undiscovered infidelity. That's how he terms what he's doing on the website. That's why he became a target of these hackers. They didn't agree with his tactics.
