Cybercriminals are capitalising on the recent Ashley Madison hack by spreading malware disguised as the account details of the site’s users.
The site, which facilitates intimate affairs between individuals, was recently attacked by The Impact Team, which managed to seize the website’s entire user database.
The stolen information comprises the names, ages, addresses, credit card information, and even sexual fantasies of 37 million members.
The group posted a small amount of these details online, saying that it would publish the lot unless Avid Life Media (Ashley Madison’s owner) shut the site down. However, ALM managed to take these details down, and The Impact Team hasn’t yet posted any further information.
A BBC investigation has since discovered that spammers are taking full advantage of the huge interest in the hack, and are as such peppering the web with malware, fake data and scam pages designed to lure interested readers in.
According to the BBC, all of the pages are fake, and could even infect your computer.
“The BBC has visited many of the pages the links point to and found that all of them were fake,” reads the report.
While most links simply display short lists of email addresses and passwords that have been in circulation for a number of years, many others lead to infected webpages demanding payment.
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Others even force your machine to download malware alongside grisly images depicting what happens to “sinners, adulterers and fornicators in hell”.
“None of these pages hosted any files that contained data from Ashley Madison,” concludes the report.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.