Adultery website ignored staff security concerns before hacking scandal

Staff at infidelity dating website Ashley Madison warned of security concerns a month before over 30million records were leaked.

Internal documents, that were also leaked, show concerns being voiced by one Vice President, who said there was: “A lack of security awareness across the organisation.”

Another leak surmised the answers of an internal survey. Kevin MacCall, Vice President of Operations, put “lack of security awareness” as what he would ‘hate to see go wrong.’ Trevor Stokes, CTO, put “security” in that bracket, and Noel Biderman, CEO, wrote: “Data exfiltration, confidentiality of the data. An insider data breach would be very harmful. Have we done [a] good enough a job vetting everyone, are we on top of it.”

The document was dated 17^th June 2015, a month before hackers Impact Team hacked the company and proclaimed they were going to release all the data.