Posted on 20 July 2015.Popular online cheating site Ashley Madison has been hacked, and personal information and financial records of 37 million of its users has apparently been compromised by the attackers, who go by the name The Impact Team.

http://www.net-security.org/images/articles/ashleymadison.jpg
User databases for two other dating sites owned by the same company (Avid Life Media) - Cougar Life and Established Men - have also been accessed and the information in them stolen.

The hackers claim to have also gotten their hands on other sensitive data such as ALM's financial records, employee network account information, maps of internal company servers, proprietary information, and emails full article

There's going to be a lot of awkward conversations today!

Graham Cluley | July 20, 2015
 
Following an embarrassing hack that has potentially put its 37 million members at risk, adulterous hook-up site Ashley Madison is allowing all members to fully delete their profiles for free.
Which is nice of them.
 
Full Article

Does one normally have to pay to delete their profile?? Seems like a bit of extortion if that's the case.

I would not have thought so normally Nic. BUT there again I do not frequent sites like that.

Good point - neither do I!

Looks like they do indeed charge a fee for full info deletion from their site:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150720/13215531709/marital-infidelity-site-ashleymadison-hacked-claims-no-one-should-worry-since-it-dmcad-all-leaked-copies.shtml

Cheaters are pushed for money to delete profiles, but they don't have to pay.

by Megan Geuss (US) - Jul 21, 2015
 
About a year ago, Ars ran this article looking into how Ashley Madison tricks people into thinking they need to pay $20 to have their profile information deleted. This weekend, a hacker group calling themselves Impact Team broke into the site and looked through its databases, finding that users' details aren't actually deleted after the $20 is handed over. In essence, the two options that Ashley Madison gives exiting customers—”Full Delete” or “Hide My Profile”—are almost the same, with the only benefit of “Full Delete” being that it removed messages and “winks” from other users' inboxes after an account was deleted. Read Ars' take below to see what we found out in August 2014. Earlier this week, Ars got an e-mail from a reader named Rob Plant. “I think most right-thinking people have been dismayed by the tactics of charging for picture take downs—what is worrying to me is that these practices now seem to have been taken up by more legitimate websites.”
 
Full Article

One word for people who use sights like this..KARMA.There is no true anonymity in cyberspace.There are so many backdoors built into the structure of the internet itself that it would be totally foolish to believe that you are totally anonymous,no matter what software,vpn's,etc you may use.Things are only going to get worse with more and more devices getting plugged in.I guess the lesson here is be careful about what info you post about yourself on the net,because you should expect something like this to happen eventually to a site you do visit.And when it comes to paying for things,i always tell people to use reloadable cards that way you will only be out a small amount,versus a potentially huge amount.Fighting with banks is time consuming and stressful,and life is definitely short. 

See that dust cloud in the distance? That's the hackers' horse, that is

By: 21 Jul 2015 at 14:28, John Leyden
 
Adulterous hook-up site Ashley Madison is allowing all members to fully delete their profiles without charge in the aftermath of a serious data breach that threatens the site' future.
Previously, if users wanted to delete their records (profile, pictures and messages sent through the system) they were obliged to pay around $20, but that money-spinner has been dropped in the aftermath of a hack that placed Ashley Madison's members in danger of exposure.
Hackers from the previously unknown group The Impact Team are threatening to leak this information unless parent firm Avid Life Media (ALM) permanently closes both Ashley Madison and site Established Men, as previously reported on El Reg.
ALM has resisted these demands and both sites remain operational despite threats by hackers to release highly-sensitive information information including "customers' secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions".
 
full article

lol! Yes there is! I guess some should have kept their pants on and will learn the hard way now.
Not that this is right by any means.

I bet you are very happy that you do not after this rude awakening?
No one is safe!

The following article is a update:
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Ashley Madison hack could ‘destabilise society’, claims John McAfee.

By: 24 Jul 2015 at 12:47, Alexander J Martin
 
Wildcard former securityware kingpin John McAfee reckons the Ashley Madison adultery-site hack threatens to "literally destabilise society", and was definitely the work of an individual acting alone.
For reasons that no doubt seem good to him, he said he has also breached the site again himself.
The one-time Guatemalan trinket peddler's pronouncement follows his earlier judgment that May's Adult Friend Finder hack was "one of the scariest hacks since the existence of computers".
That title, in McAfee's mind, now clearly belongs to the breach of Ashley Madison. He made his latest assertion using popular blogging platform and IB Times.
Portraying himself as somewhere between giggling and despairing at the Ashley Madison events, less than 24 hours after the breach McAfee decided to find out how difficult it might be to penetrate the infidelity institution once again.
From the comfort of his own bed, he claims, he called Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison's parent company which also runs the Cougar Life and Established Men websites. These "were all hacked" he reminded readers. "So we are really talking about 50 million people, not 37 million."
 
full article

Hackers expose first Ashley Madison users

The hackers who infiltrated AshleyMadison.com, a dating website geared toward people seeking extramarital relationships, have sacrificed their first hostage.
 
The attack, reported Monday, collected personal information on 37 million members. The perpetrators demanded that the whole website be taken down or they would release all the names and private data they have.
 
"I think the motivation for the hackers is to embarrass the company," CBS News business analyst Jill Schlesinger said in an appearance on "CBS This Morning."
 
For a website like Ashley Madison that prides itself on secrecy and anonymity, a breach like this can be catastrophic. The site's subscribers presumably felt that their private information was safe -- and many even paid extra to have their information scrubbed.
 
"The quick answer is: not that safe," Dr. Michael Sulmeyer, the director of the Cyber Security Initiative at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center, told CBS Boston.
 
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hackers-expose-first-ashley-madison-users/

GOOD. What a disgusting website anyway. I wish you wouldn't warn people about it. I never warn people if there's a speed trap- you play you pay.:manmad:

Looks like the hackers followed through with their thread to release the data:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/data-from-hack-of-ashley-madison-cheater-site-purportedly-dumped-online/

18th August 2015
 
Many news sites and blogs are reporting that the data stolen last month from 37 million users of AshleyMadison.com — a site that facilitates cheating and extramarital affairs — has finally been posted online for the world to see. In the past 48 hours, several huge dumps of data claiming to be the actual AshleyMadison database have turned up online. But there are precious few details in them that would allow one to verify these claims, and the company itself says it so far sees no indication that the files are legitimate.
 
Update, 11:52 p.m. ET: 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. Also, it occurs to me that it’s been almost exactly 30 days since the original hack. Finally, all of the accounts created at Bugmenot.com for Ashleymadison.com prior to the original breach appear to be in the leaked data set as well. I’m sure there are millions of AshleyMadison users who wish it weren’t so, but there is every indication this dump is the real deal.
 
Full Article

According to the one on kat....    it was 9.69 gbs     :D  

The following article is a update:
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Ashley Madison keeps calm, carries on after hackers expose lives of millions of its users.

By: 19 Aug 2015 at 19:36, John Leyden
 
Infidelity website Ashley Madison has pledged to continue operations after hackers leaked its customer database online.
The Impact Team, which claimed responsibility for the hack on Ashley Madison and sister site Established Men, have made good on their threat to publish compromising information on millions of people.
 Around 9.7 GB of customer data were released on a dark web (.onion) site on Tuesday night. This information included sexual preferences, (stated) weight, addresses, GPS locations, card payment histories, phone numbers, dates of birth and more. More than 36 million names featured in the leak, which has already become available through BitTorrent.
More than 90 per cent of the accounts belong to men. AshleyMadison.com did not verify email signups to the site, as password security expert Per Thorsheim previously established, so we can't assume owners of the 36 million email addresses exposed by the leak all signed up to the extra-marital sex hookup site. Anyone whose email address did turn up will nonetheless have a lot of explaining to their partners in store.
 
full article

Obviously they are. It is one thing to carry on like this in private BUT you do not jeopardize your carreer over it.
 

Lots of users appear to have used work addresses

 
                                                  

 
20 Aug 2015 at 02:31, Iain Thomson
 
It has been a depressing and enlightening day at El Reg's San Francisco office as we've been churning through the Ashley Madison databases, and a recurrent theme echoing around the room is: "How could people be so stupid?"
 
It's not the cheating per se – let's not get started on the morals of it all – but it's clear that the many of the 36 million people who signed up didn't have the first clue about safeguarding their privacy – why put all that compromising info in the hands of one website? – and more than a few were signing up from their work addresses.
 
Analyzing the email addresses is fraught with dangers. Many are obviously spoofed – foxmulder@fbi.gov and i-trust-you-not@nsa.gov are clearly fakes, and it's unlikely that Tony Blair really is signed up using his official email address.
 
Full Article

 

Ha! these cheaters using there work addresses....wait till there company's get wind of this double trouble on the arisen !!!!!

I can't believe that people actually used work email.  lol

The following article is a update:
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Now Ashley Madison hackers leak CEO's emails, source code.

By: 20 Aug 2015 at 20:10, Iain Thomson
 
Stats Another load of internal files swiped by hackers from Ashley Madison have been leaked online – and they apparently feature the CEO's emails and the website's source code.
The 18.5GB leak includes archives of internal company emails, including one folder labeled Noel Biderman – the chief exec of Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison's parent.
 Given the size of the file and the relatively small number of people seeding it over file-sharing networks, it will be some time before its veracity is ascertained. The torrent was published on the same website used by the Impact Team hackers in the past.
 
full article

The following article is a update:
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Why corporate security pros should care about the Ashley Madison breach.

By Tim Greene
 Corporate security executives should have a professional interest in the Ashley Madison breach because publicly posted data about its customers represents a fertile field for spear phishers trying to attack business networks.
Anyone whose name and contact information appears in the 9.7GB stolen names contact information will likely be susceptible to opening emails purportedly from Ashley Madison, divorce lawyers and private investigators, says Tom Kellerman, chief cybersecurity officer for Trend Micro.
 
Individuals exposed as customers of Ashley Madison, which connects people interested in cheating on their spouses, will be more apt not only to open such emails but also to open attachments or click on links within those emails that results in malware infections on their computers. The compromised computers can then be used as platforms to launch further exploits against the corporate network. "It's probably already begun in earnest," he says.
 
full article

People with accounts are now receiving extortion emails:

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/08/extortionists-target-ashley-madison-users/