Cheating website Ashley Madison faces more leaks: Customers’ explicit sexual information

The person or persons behind a cyber attack on the parent company of Ashley Madison, a matchmaking website for cheating spouses, are threatening to release all of the site’s personal information – including its members’ sexual fantasies and financial information.

The release would occur if the company doesn’t take Ashley Madison offline, according to a prominent security blog.

Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc., the parent company, says it has had the hackers’ posts, which included snippets of personal information, taken down and has hired a technology security firm. The company and law enforcement agencies are investigating.

The breach was first reported late Sunday by Brian Krebs of KrebsonSecurity, a website that focuses on cybersecurity. Ashley Madison, whose slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair,” purports to have 37 million members.

The hacking follows the May breach of the dating website Adult FriendFinder, which involved the theft of names, email addresses and information about the sexual orientation or habits of up to 4 million of that site’s members.

According to Krebs, the hacker or hackers, in the Ashley Madison breach identified as “The Impact Team,” posted large caches of data from the site, claiming to have compromised user databases, financial records and other information.

The hacker or hackers also posted a manifesto alongside the data, accusing Avid Life Media of lying to its customers about a $19 service that would scrub all of their personal information from its data bases, saying that the data doesn’t actually go away,” Krebs says.