In the tech industry many companies and sites have begun releasing bounties for bugs and security flaws detected within their system. Ashley Madison, the online relationship-cheating website is taking things to a new level by issuing a $377,000 bounty for the hackers that essentially turned their business upside down.
“Amid reports that the Ashley Madison security breach may have led to suicides and extortion plots, Toronto police and the affair-arranging website are upping the ante to catch the hackers responsible for the embarrassing leak of users’ information,” according to CNET.
“To increase the chance of that happening, Ashley Madison’s parent company, Avid Life Media, offered $500,000 Canadian ($377,000) on Monday to anyone providing information leading to the arrest of those involved.”
The Impact Team might have started their hack with a righteous mission in mind, however, their hack may be the cause of death and without a doubt might have been the cause for many future divorces in the near future. Impact Team threatened to release the information if the website didn’t shut down and without thinking twice they made their threat come to fruition. The result? A huge zipped file filled with names, credit card numbers and a world of confidential and more intimate information.
“While it’s all happened on the Internet, there have been very real effects,” according to the report.
“In a press conference on Monday, Toronto police said they suspect two suicides were related to the leak. They also believe the hack led to a few attempts of extortion from the outed users. Now, Ashley Madison is willing to pay up to find the culprits. If it succeeds, the bounty could renew people’s faith in Internet companies, experts say.”
“If people know hacking is not an anonymous crime and they can be caught, there’s much more of a deterrent,” said Jonathan Schmidt, a former prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney with Ropes & Gray.
The life altering information rightfully wouldn’t be out there if Ashley Madison did not exist, that being said, this hack has the potential to negatively affect the lives of users and was completely intrusive. Impact Team might not be worried as they are hackers after all and masters of mystery.
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