Pierluigi Paganini
August 25, 2015
Avid Life Media, the company that owns the Ashley Madison is offering a $500,000 reward for information that could allow law enforcement to identify and arrest the hackers behind the recent data breach it suffered.
The company is hunting the resposibles, it has hired a number of investigators and forensic experts to identify them.
Bryce Evans, the acting staff superintendent of the Toronto police, made the official announcement:
“Today I can confirm that Avid Life Media is offering a $500,000 reward to anyone providing information that leads to the identification, arrest and prosecution of the person or persons responsible for the leak of the Ashley Madison database,” Evans said, reported the BBC.
The consequence of such kind of data breach could be dramatic for the victims of the adultery website, the police confirmed to suicides caused by the hacks. The stolen data included some 36 million email addresses associated with accounts, the dump leaked online includes personal information of Ashley Madison users.
Evans also provided further details on the breach, he revealed that Ashley Madison workers first discovered the hack on July 12 when they logged into their computers and received a message from the hackers. Evans only added that the message was accompanied by the AC/DC’s song “Thunderstruck.”
This particular sounds familiar for my old readers, on July 2012 a scientist working at the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) declared that computer systems were hit by a cyber-attack.
This attack appeared really singular because it forced computers to play AC/DC’s Thunderstruck at full volume in the middle of the night.
The company F-Secure was the first security firm informed of the attack, it received an email from AEOI that stated:
“I am writing you to inform you that our nuclear program has once again been compromised and attacked by a new worm with exploits which have shut down our automation network at Natanz and another facility Fordo near Qom. According to the email our cyber experts sent to our teams, they believe a hacker tool Metasploit was used. The hackers had access to our VPN. The automation network and Siemens hardware were attacked and shut down. I only know very little about these cyber issues as I am scientist not a computer expert.
There was also some music playing randomly on several of the workstations during the middle of the night with the volume maxed out. I believe it was playing ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC.”
It’s curious that the hackers behind the Ashley Madison hack have used the same music.
(Security Affairs – Ashley Madison, Data Breach)
Hacking / November 23, 2024
