Owners of site that facilitates affairs respond to hacker threats

There are a few inherent reputational pitfalls in operating a website for the express purpose of facilitating extramarital affairs, but things really came to a head this week for Avid Life Media (ALM), the company that runs Ashley Madison, a dating site for married people.

A group of hackers calling itself the “Impact Team” claimed to have breached the site over the weekend, posting account data from a handful of users as proof. They threatened to post all 37 million users’ names and addresses unless ALM took down the site permanently.

ALM released a statement about the threat Monday. It reads, in part:

We apologize for this unprovoked and criminal intrusion into our customers’ information. The current business world has proven to be one in which no company’s online assets are safe from cyber-vandalism, with Avid Life Media being only the latest among many companies to have been attacked, despite investing in the latest privacy and security technologies.