Pictured: Noel Biderman, former CEO of Ashley Madison parent ALM
After one of the most notorious data breaches in the history of the internet, Noel Biderman, the CEO of Avid Life Media (ALM), owners of the compromised cheating site Ashley Madison, is to step down.
Ashley Madison, a site that enabled married people to seek out affairs, was hacked by a hacker collective calling itself Impact Team.
Details of some 36m users were dumped last week onto the TOR dark web, with a further 20Gb of internal ALM data also dumped.
The hackers said they were responding to the morality of aiding and abetting affairs and their belief that the site was a scam because 90pc of users were male and thousands of female profiles are understood to have been fake.
The situation became worse for ALM when it emerged that Ashley Madison charged users US$19 to have their data removed. It also emerged that ALM had considered hacking competitors’ websites.
Ashley Madison seeks justice
In a statement this afternoon (28 August) ALM said that Biderman’s decision to step down was mutual. Until a new CEO is appointed the company will be led by its existing management team.
“This change is in the best interest of the company and allows us to continue to provide support to our members and dedicated employees. We are steadfast in our commitment to our customer base.
“We are actively adjusting to the attack on our business and members’ privacy by criminals. We will continue to provide access to our unique platforms for our worldwide members.
“We are actively cooperating with international law enforcement in an effort to bring those responsible for the theft of proprietary member and business information to justice,” ALM said.
