Friday, 21 August 2015 - 11:07
Nearly 600 Dutch details online through cheaters' website hack
A hack on adulterers website Ashley Madison has released the personal information of 594 Dutchmen to the public.
This is according to an analysis don on the leaked data by RTL Nieuws. In the hack the personal information of 37 million Ashley Madison customers was stolen, including IP addresses, residential addresses and email addresses.
The personal information of the Dutchmen was available for access because they bought credits to use the website - their data could be found from their credit card transactions, according to RTL. Male users have to use credits to start conversations and send messages. Women can use the site for free.
The Dutchmen whose details were released come from all over the country - 84 from Amsterdam 24 from The Hague, 22 from Rotterdam, 17 from both Utrecht and Haarlem, 9 from Hilversum, 6 from both Hoofddorp and Venray and four from the small Brabant town of Wouw.
The hackers released another of Ashley Madison's databases on Thursday night. This included the complete email inbox of Noel Biderman, CEO of Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison. The release was accompanied by a message. "Hey Noel, you can now admit that the hack is real." The site's source code was also released, giving everyone access to the technology behind the website.
Hackers are increasingly becoming a problem for companies of all shapes and sizes world wide. In the Netherlands, internet service provider Ziggo has been the victim of several so-called DDoS attacks this week, leaving nearly 2 million customers without internet access for several hours. Earlier this year hackers broke into online store Mapp.nl and gained access to part of its client database, including 157 thousand email addresses and encrypted passwords. Last summer, in one of the biggest hacks in Dutch history, hackers gained access to login details of 5,500 .nl domains and 1.3 million email addresses. This included email address of the Ministry of Defense. Even the MH17 investigation team is not safe. In September last year Pieter Jaap Aalbersberg, leader of the repatriation mission, reported that they believe the investigators' phones and computers have been hacked and bugged.