Ashley Madison Update: Leaked Emails Show That Website's CEO, CTO Tried To Hack Rival

By R. Siva Kumar - 26 Aug '15 22:10PM

Even though Ashley Madison has got a number of people into trouble, with a $578 million class action suit slapped on it, the cheating website has thought itself to be---and is considered---a victim, according to krebsonsecurity.

However, there is a fresh update. An internal email conversation between Raja Bhatia, Ashley Madison's founding CTO, and Noel Biderman, CEO of its parent company Avid Life Media disclosed that both of them may have plotted to hack another rival.

So the Impact Team that originally hacked the site is at it again. It just included a 30 gigabyte archive from Biderman's email account. It showed another interesting tidbit, showing Bhatia exploiting a security hole at a competing website, nerve.com.

This digital magazine on sex had launched a dating service just like Ashley Madison's. Due to that a potential buyout of nerve.com by ALM seems to have suddenly dropped.

Hence, a message was sent to Biderman by Bhatia, telling the CEO about the security hole he wanted to penetrate.

"They did a very lousy job building their platform. I got their entire user base... email, including in the message a link to a Github archive with a sample of the database. Also, I can turn any non paying user into a paying user, vice versa, compose messages between users, check unread stats, etc.," Bhatia wrote.

The email chain started on November 2012, revealing that there was some by Biderman, noted hngn.

At first, Biderman in 2013 asked whether they should tell Nerve.com about the hole. However, "although the emails discuss setting up a phone call with Nerve.com, it's not clear if ALM did disclose the vulnerability," according to wired.

A few more emails showed that Biderman looked at the fall of Ashley Madison's rivals as a "business opportunity".

So far, Biderman and Bhatia have been silent about this new development, but Avid Life Media has said that the emails were taken out of context.

"Nerve was exploring strategic partnerships in May of 2012 and reached out to Noel to determine Avid Life Media's interest in the property. At the time Noel did not act on that opportunity," an ALM representative said.