In the last several weeks, the Ashley Madison hacking scandal has dominated the headlines. Now, the hackers speak out.
They call themselves the Impact Team and they talked about their incredible hack via email to Motherboardvice.com. So far they dumped 10GB of customer information, 20GB of internal data, and made a third break-in as well. Over 38 million customers of the adulterous website has been affected. The Impact Team start out by insisting they didn’t blackmail anybody. They claim Ashley Madison’s parent company Avid Life Media did the blackmailing. They say the hook up site’s security was so bad that nobody was watching. In the Impact Team’s arsenal are employee documents, user pictures, user messages and chats. They accuse Avid Media Life of making $100 million a year in fraud. The Impact Team says Avid Media goes beyond promoting adultery. They say Avid Life exploit their customers like drug dealers exploit their addicts. We haven’t heard the last of the Impact Team. Their mission is to go after any company or any powerful person who profits from destroying others. They even talked about going after corrupt politicians. They picked a great time to do so. Let me just say, if they do go after corrupt politicians, they’ve got a lot of work to do.
My eighth grade language arts teacher used to say, “Life is the sum of all your choices”. That’s playing out right before our eyes. Some may ask, “How is Ashley Madison profiting from destroying others?” That’s what extramarital affairs do. They destroy the people committing them. They destroy ?spouses. They destroy children. They break up households. They cause emotional wounds that may never heal. I‘ve read stories where adulterous affairs led to murder and/or suicide. And for a company to profit off this kind of pain and suffering is disgraceful. Is the Impact Team justified for hacking Ashley Madison?