According to reports, it seems that the website has been hacked and during the hack, the use database of Ashley Madison’s users along with their financial records and details have been stolen. To date a group calling themselves The Impact Team have taken credit for the hack, and safe to say that should the information be disseminated, a lot of relationships could potentially be in trouble.
The group is currently holding the information ransom and has threatened to release all of it. However it seems that they’re not after financial reward, but it seems to be a moral/ethical issue for the group. They are demanding that Ashley Madison and Established Men (another website owned by the group) be taken offline in all forms.
In a statement provided by Avid Life Media, the company that runs the website and others similar to it, “We have always had the confidentiality of our customers’ information foremost in our minds, and have had stringent security measures in place, including working with leading IT vendors from around the world. As other companies have experienced, these security measures have unfortunately not prevented this attack to our system.”