Daily Management Review

Infidelity Website 'Ashley Madison' Hacking Leads to Two Suicides


08/24/2015




Infidelity Website 'Ashley Madison' Hacking Leads to Two Suicides
There have been two confirmed suicides in relation to the hacking of a infidelity website Ashley Madison.

This was confirmed by the Toronto police who also issued warnings to the hackers of the infidelity website that their actions "won't be tolerated" .

Last week, hackers managed to seat personal data of millions of users of the infidelity website. Many of the e-mail IDs and the credit card details later released by the hackers showed very well known faces and people – including high ranking officials from the U.S., UK civil servants and high-level executives at European and North America corporations. Some of them also used their official email add ID to register to the site.

While angering and tormenting the users of the website, the incident has also the potential to likely rattle the users' attitude towards the Internet and toward such websites.

Maximum damage was arguably inflicted on the members of a marital cheating website when the identities of the members were revealed that left the members suffering public embarrassment and potentially hurting relationships.

"This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world," said Staff Supt. Bryce Evans at a Monday morning news conference.

"Your actions are illegal and won't be tolerated," said Evans about a case also now being investigated by Canada's privacy commissioner.

Though the police did not divulge any details of the about the possible place where the unconfirmed suicide cases may have occurred, the police confirmed incidents of hate crimes connected to the hack.

A reward of $500,000 has been announced by the Avid Life Media, the owner of the website, to anyone who contributes information that leads to an arrest in the case. However no estimates have been given by the Toronto-based company about how much data was stolen by hackers.

The Toronto police however warned the users whose data had been stolen about the potential number of scams that can be targeted at them in the wake of the breach.

The scandalous nature of the Ashley Madison website has attracted "enormous" attention around the world to the incident of hacking, said police.

The catch line of the website is: "Life is short. Have an affair."

The police said that the nature of the website had no importance to the police investigations as they were only concerned about the hacking and the suicides related to the hacking. The police also warned against forger who claimed that they would help erase the information of users on the website against a fee which was no t possible according to the police.

While the website was hacked in July, the data was dumped for public viewing last week.

“Nobody is going to be able to erase that information," Evans said, adding clicking on many of those links exposes your computer to malware and viruses.

To crack the case, the police have sought the help of the tech community, as well as "white hat hackers" who don't engage in crime.

The responsibility for the hacking had been claimed by a hacker’s group that call itself Impact Team.


(Sources: www.cbc.ca, www.bbc.co.uk & www.theguardian.com)