The 37 million or so alleged cheaters who were notoriously exposed recently when website Ashley Madison was hacked are now facing additional concerns. Extorters are now threatening to expose the cheaters' information to their friends and family unless they pony up a payment in exchange for the criminal's silence.
It's been a proverbial nightmare for the 37 million potential adulterers whose information was hacked and exposed in August. Users of the Ashley Madison website, which promised married men (and women) the chance to carry on illicit affairs without the knowledge of their spouses, suddenly had to contend with the anger and outrage of their significant others when their personal information was released.
Now, the nightmare continues, as many of those same wannabe cheaters are now being blackmailed via emails threatening to contact family, friends, and in some cases, spouses who are still unaware that their partner was using the service.
One former member received such an email last month in his Yahoo mail inbox: "You got busted," the letter begins. "Unfortunately your data was leaked in the recent hacking of Ashley Madison and I know [sic] have your information," said the message. "I have also used your user profile to find your Facebook page, using this I can now message all of your friends and family members." The email gave the former user three days to send two Bitcoin, which have a fluctuating value of several hundred dollars each, or else they would follow through on the threat.
Emails like this have been flooding the email boxes of former Ashley Madison members since the hacking scandal blew up several months ago. Software security expert Johannes Ullrich, Ph.D., dean of research for SANS Technology Institute in Jacksonville, Fla., believes the emails are not the work of Impact Team, which performed the initial hack.
"They used spambot techniques, which are favorites of the Russian mob and Nigerian scammers," he says.
Fortunately, Ullrich doesn't believe the scammers will follow through on the threats, explaining that, "It would be too much trouble for them, and there is a risk they could be traced."
Status Labs, a reputation management firm, has a free hotline for potential victims who receive these types of email threats, and they advise victims not to make any payments and to immediately change their Facebook settings to private. Status says the email scammers are playing a numbers game in the hopes that they scare even a small percentage of those emailed into paying.
