Ashley Madison data breach: 30.8M accounts exposed
Severity: high · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2015-08-18
In July 2015, the infidelity website Ashley Madison suffered a serious data breach. The attackers threatened Ashley Madison with the full disclosure of the breach unless the service was shut down. One month later, the database was dumped including more than 30M unique email addresses. This breach has been classed as "sensitive" and is not publicly searchable, although individuals may discover if they've been impacted by registering for notifications. Read about this approach in detail. Exposed data: dates of birth, email addresses, ethnicities, genders, names, passwords, payment histories, phone numbers, physical addresses, security questions and answers, sexual orientations, usernames, website activity. The breach dates from Jul 19, 2015; Have I Been Pwned loaded it on Aug 18, 2015.
What to do
- If you had a Ashley Madison account, change its password and the password of any other account that reused it.
- Turn on multi-factor authentication wherever it is offered.
- Check whether your addresses are in this breach at https://haveibeenpwned.com.
- Expect targeted phishing that quotes the leaked details; verify any unexpected contact out of band.
Sources
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