A second, even bigger, ‘cheat sheet’ exposing the users of adultery website Ashley Madison, including the emails of its founder Noel Biderman, has been released onto the web. In a message accompanying the release, the hackers said: “Hey Noel, you can admit it’s real now.” That appeared to be a riposte to the company’s initial response to Tuesday’s dump that the data may not be authentic.
The earlier dump exposed millions of email addresses for customers of Ashley Madison – whose tagline is ‘Life is short. Have an affair.’ – including for U.S. government officials, UK civil servants and high-level executives at European and North America corporations. The U.S Defense Department and Postal Service are also investigating the alleged use of military and other government email accounts on the site.
The hackers object to the site’s business practices, specifically a “paid delete” option that allows people to pay to remove all their information but, they say, does not actually do that. David Kennedy, founder and security consultant at TrustedSec, said that the fresh release appears to be authentic. “Everything appears to be legit,” he said in an email. “We have portions downloaded and its confirmed legitimate thus far.” A report in Vice Media’s online technology site Motherboard, which first reported the new data dump, said the release bore the same fingerprints as Tuesday’s release.
The additional release will likely ratchet up the pressure on Avid Life, which has been quiet about exactly how much and what sort of data was stolen in a breach in July. Since the hack last month, Avid Life has indefinitely postponed the adultery site’s IPO plans. Avid values itself at $1 billion and reported revenue of $115 million in 2014, up 45 per cent from the preceding year.
The company, which also owns websites CougarLife.com and EstablishedMen.com, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.