Edinburgh Napier University

  There’s value in more than just credit card data, as Avid Life Media (ALM), parent company of the extramarital affair website Ashley Madison, has found out after being raided for millions of their customer’s details. All sorts of information that isn’t expressly financial is valuable – HR records including personal information and health information, such as those stolen from the US government, can be used to fraudulently gain access to other data, of for blackmail for financial gain or to further a political or moral agenda. The Ashley Madison hackers, calling themselves Impact Team, seem to have a moral agenda, adding another dimension to the factors that motivate cybercriminals, and therefore something else for overburdened security professionals to consider.