Ashley Madison claims to have removed the leaked customer information that was posted online, following today’s massive security breach.
It was revealed today that the company was the victim of a huge attack by hackers, who threatened to release the private information of 37m customers if Ashley Madison’s parent company Avid Life Media didn’t shut down Ashley Madison and Established Men.
The hackers threatened to release “all customer records, profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and nude pictures”, along with “conversations and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses and employee documents and emails.”
To prove they had hacked the company’s system, the hackers – known as The Impact Team – posted around 40MB of user data online, which included its lengthy manifesto explaining why they had targeted Ashley Madison.
But in a statement sent to Global Dating Insights, Avid Life Media has said it has removed the first set of user data and information that was posted by the hackers earlier today.
The company said: “Using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), our team has now successfully removed all the posts related to this incident as well as all Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about our users published online. We have always had the confidentiality of our customers’ information foremost in our minds and are pleased that the provisions included in the DMCA have been effective in addressing this matter.”
ALM said as soon as it was made aware of the attack, the company engaged “one of the world’s top IT security teams” to take every step to mitigate the attack.
The company told GDI: “Our team of forensics experts and security professionals, in addition to law enforcement, are continuing to investigate this incident and we will continue to provide updates as they become available.”
However despite Avid Life Media’s claims it has removed the initial user information posted online, the hackers have threatened to release more personal data every day until the sites are taken down.
Read more about the breach here.