Bigger batch of Ashley Madison data may contain CEO's emails
The hacking group Impact Team responsible for the hack on cheating site Ashley Madison has apparently dumped another batch of data onto the dark web. This one is twice the size of the trove released Tuesday, and appears to contain emails belonging to the CEO of Avid Life Media, which owns the website, and the code behind the site itself.
"It looks like it was in response to Avid Life (owner of Ashley Madison) response that the dump was not legitimate and fake," security information firm TrustedSec said in a blog post Thursday. "The Impact Team hackers posted their message to the CEO of Avid - Noel Biderman letting him and everyone know that the dump is legitimate and that there's no question about it now."
According to Ars Technica, 13 of the 19 gigabytes' worth of data in the new dump is email stolen from Biderman's account. The rest is source code for the website and smartphone apps, "as well as proprietary corporate data."
TrustedSec explained in its post that "if this turns out to be legitimate which it in all aspects appears to be - having full source code to these websites means that other hacker groups now have the ability to find new flaws in Avid Life's websites, and further compromise them more."
The company also said this should put to rest any questions of validity of the data.
The first dump contained nearly 10 gigabytes of user email addresses, profile information and credit card transactions. Alleged users whose emails were exposed include Canadian politicians, disgraced "19 Kids and Counting" star Josh Duggar and thousands of government and military personnel whose email addresses were identified by their .mil and .gov domains.
When asked about the revelation of military email addresses in the Ashley Madison leak in a Pentagon briefing Thursday, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said, "Of course it's an issue because conduct is very important and we expect good conduct. The services are looking into it, as well as they should be."