Ashley Madison CEO Steps Down

Noel Biderman, the CEO of the extra-marital dating website, Ashley Madison, stepped down today. Its parent company Avid Life Media, the operator of the "infidelity network", explained that they were both in "mutual agreement" about their split, according to cnn.

"This change is in the best interest of the company and allows us to continue to provide support to our members and dedicated employees," Avid Life Media said.

"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 co-operating with international law enforcement in an effort to bring those responsible for the theft of proprietary member and business information to justice."

It has vowed that it would provide "uninterrupted member access" to its website.

Canadian parent company Avid Life Media, which owns the site, has offered a reward of C$500,000 (£240,000) for information about hackers, according to bbc.

One hacker group called the "Impact Team" last week revealed personal details of the members after stealing the information from the company's servers, along with corporate emails and sensitive computer source code.

The Impact Team had released some stunning revelations through the emails, including 200,000 emails associated with Noel Biderman.

Norwegian security researcher Per Thorsheim said they were genuine. "I saw one email or two emails and I could verify the sender, the recipient, the domains and everything so it has to be an email from the CEO's mailbox," he said.

"There's no doubt about that."

Biderman's post will be filled in by other executives till the appointment of a new boss, Avid Life Media said.

The Canadian police say that two suicides may perhaps be linked to the website's leak of the 32 million accounts.