CEO of parent company Ashley Madison resigns after disastrous hack

The director of hack-stricken Ashley Madison resigns. The parent company of the cheating dating site, Avid Life Media, says it is looking for a new director. Until then, veterans take over.

The scandal received international press attention. Partly for this reason, director Noel Biderman will have had to leave the company. Avid Life Media did not confirm this, but said in a statement Friday only that Biderman’s departure is in the best interests of the company.

Biderman’s position apparently became untenable after malicious parties broke into the company’s systems behind the dating site for people in a relationship last month. The customer data of the members of Ashley Madison, but also of sister sites Established Men and Cougar Life ended up on the street. It’s about 50 gigabytes of data. The criminals also copied the emails of the employees of Avid Life Media, including Biderman’s.

The criminals, operating under the name Impact Team, broke in because they consider the sites immoral. They also cracked Ashley Madison, because the Full Delete feature, which cost users $19, didn’t actually delete the data from the servers. For now, the data from Cougar Life and Established Men has not been leaked, but this could still happen.

Meanwhile, Avid Life Media tries to find out who was behind the large-scale attack. It cooperates with the Canadian police and is offering a reward of 500,000 Canadian dollars, or 326,000 euros, for anyone who can supply information that leads the authorities to the hackers.

Finally, Avid Life Media reports that the hack-affected Ashley Madison, Established Men and Cougar Life will remain online and thus will continue to exist. The company says it is making adjustments to prevent criminals from breaking in and looting data again in the future.