On 12 July several Avid Life Media employees were confronted by a message accompanied by music – AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” from the hackers who called themselves “The Impact Team”. It is the biggest and most sophisticated hack. Details of more than 33m accounts of people’s personal information were stolen from the website.
Hackers have a field day for victimisation and online scams. Two individuals associated with the leak of Ashley Madison customer details have committed suicide. Ashley Madison’s Canadian parent company Avid Life Media is frantically trying to identify the hackers by offering a C$500,000 (£240,000) reward for information. Hackers who call themselves as Impact Team have released credit card data in the original data dump but this was limited to the last four digits of the main card number.
Criminals have already started online scams by claiming to provide access to the leaked websites. The gullible public are exposing their computers to malware, spyware, adware and viruses by clicking the links.
Addressing the hackers the Toronto police said: “I want to make it very clear to you your actions are illegal and we will not be tolerating them. This is your wake-up call.”
Police are looking for help from the wider hacker community for their investigation. Consequently, police advise victims of the hack to review their accounts.
