{"id":1985,"date":"2015-08-21T00:47:51","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T23:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1985"},"modified":"2016-01-29T14:39:16","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T14:39:16","slug":"ashley-madison-and-the-top-5-cyber-attacks-of-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/blog\/ashley-madison-and-the-top-5-cyber-attacks-of-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashley Madison and the top 5 cyber attacks of 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The hackers who last month attacked the Ashley Madison\u00a0website have\u00a0today released the names,\u00a0email addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card numbers of 37 million users of the infidelity site.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Qyk9yY-vEik\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Thousands of government and military officials from both sides of the Atlantic appear to have been exposed in the data dump, with email addresses linked to the White House, NASA, the Vatican and the United Nations, as well as the UK email addresses of\u00a0local and national government employees &#8211;\u00a0including at least one senior civil servant.<\/p>\n<h2>Data dump<\/h2>\n<p>The hackers dropped a 10Gb file of information about users of the\u00a0adultery dating website,\u00a0and while the\u00a0majority of the email addresses used were from\u00a0personal Hotmail or Gmail accounts, many used work-linked email accounts.<\/p>\n<p>And things took another turn yesterday when\u00a0the hackers dumped a second lot of data online to prove just how deep they dug into the Ashley Madison data.<\/p>\n<p>The second data dump contained a large amount of email addresses linked to Noel Biderman &#8211; the CEO of Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison&#8217;s parent company &#8211; as well as a personal message mocking him: &#8220;Hey Noel, you can admit it&#8217;s real now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is by no mean an isolated incident though, and there have already been at least five high profile and far-reaching cyber attacks that have taken place this year.<\/p>\n<h2>The top 5 hacks of 2015<\/h2>\n<p><strong>80,000<\/strong> people were affected in February when customer details were stolen from Anthem, the second largest health insurer in the US.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3.9 million<\/strong> people had sensitive information &#8211; including name, email addresses and sexual preferences &#8211; compromised following\u00a0a hack into the Adult Friend Finder dating website in May.<\/p>\n<p><strong>10 million<\/strong> users of the Twitch gaming platform were asked to change their passwords following a hack in March. It&#8217;s unclear how many users were actually affected though.<\/p>\n<p><strong>21.5 million<\/strong>\u00a0US military and intelligence personnel\u00a0saw their details stolen during a hack on US Office of Personnel Management in July. This included information needed for security clearances, such as eye colour, relative&#8217;s contact details and evidence of past substance abuse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>37 million<\/strong> people are thought to have been affected by last month&#8217;s attack on the adultery website.<\/p>\n<h3>Have you ever been the victim of a cyber attack? Let us know&#8230;<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/conference-call\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1777 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conferencecall.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/conference-call-banner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"118\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hackers who last month attacked the Ashley Madison\u00a0website have\u00a0today released the names,\u00a0email addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card numbers of 37 million users of the infidelity site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[29,18],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ashley Madison and the top 5 cyber attacks of 2015 - ConferenceCall.co.uk blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Ashley Madison hack has compromised the details of 37 million users - 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