Ashley Madison’s parent company, Avid Life Media (ALM), is now offering a reward of up to $500,000 for anyone who provides info that leads to the arrest of the hackers that stole and released reams of personal user data from the company’s servers.
The high-profile hack, which has been in the headlines again since last week when the attackers released around 10GB of data, is also believed to be related to two unconfirmed suicides, according to Canadian police speaking at a press conference this morning.
Acting staff superintendent Bryce Evans appealed to members of the hacking community with knowledge of who carried out the attacks to “do the right thing” and report them.
The site was first hacked back at the start of July, when ALM was told to shut down its site or suffer the data being released. When this didn’t happen, user details of 30 million members were released alongside a message saying ‘Time’s up!’
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
However, while it’s obviously potentially embarrassing and destructive for tens of millions of people’s personal life, the leak is also being linked to two deaths.
“As of this morning, we have two unconfirmed reoports of suicides that are associated with the leak of Ashley Madison’s customer profiles,” Evans said.
He added that other criminals are now also running follow-on scams, which include offering to remove personal details from the database for a fee or attempts to gain further access to details through social engineering.
Police appealed for anyone with information to get in touch with them directly, rather than passing that data to Ashley Madison, which is probably for the best given the leaky status of the site lately.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.