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Spammers exploit Ashley Madison leak

Fake details being released on sites like Pastebin and Slexy.

By CBR Staff Writer

Spammers are reportedly capitalising on the Ashley Madison hacking incident after spam links consisting of fake data, fraudulent pages and malware started surfacing over the internet.

The attack was exposed by computer security blogger Brian Krebs last month, were hackers claimed that they have stolen details of 37 million accounts registered to the infidelity site.

Krebs analysed that only a small amount of information was released initially, and hackers only threatened to expose it all if the site was not shut down.

Ashley Madison owner Avid Life Media managed to remove the shared data by the hackers, and since then no new stolen information has been posted online, according to an investigation by BBC.

Spammers are trying to exploit the interest generated by hack, and try to exploit users by posting links on sites like Pastebin and Slexy, claiming that it contained information about those who used the infidelity services of Ashley Madison.

However, most of the links are reportedly fake and contains stolen email addresses and passwords that have been shared since 2011.

Some of the links asked visitors to fill up survey prior to getting hold of the ‘fake’ data, while other sites even asked users to play expensive mobile game or watch videos to get hold of the cheaters.

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The news site cited Pastebin head Jeroen Vader as saying: "Spammers will always try to abuse any trend to get some free exposure, and this Ashley Madison leak is no exception.

"It is hard for us to remove everything, but we do actively search for such posts."

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