Millions of personal names, addresses and emails of
those who signed up to affairs website Ashley Madison have been published online
including several executives working for mass retailers and manufacturers.

It already appears that several CE and appliance industry
executives have been looking for extra-marital love behind their partners back
including one high profile executive from a mass retailer whose name pops up on
the dumped data.

ChannelNews obtained the names of several executives in the
CE industry by typing in known email addresses.

Now how can you find out if you know someone who has been
exposed by the big dump?

A developer known as “Rufo” has created a simple
website for searching the massive database of emails that have been published
by the hackers.

The site, called ashley.cynic.al, will only reveal emails
that have been used to sign up for a profile with Ashley Madison.

It won’t reveal if the user behind the email address has
been actively using the site.

What’s more, it doesn’t reveal anything like names, credit
card details or sexual preferences that could be exposed in the second dump of
data that was released a few hours ago.

The fresh set of Ashley Maddison files have been uploaded to
a part of the internet known by some as the “dark web”.

The data dump was accompanied by a note addressed to the
infidelity dating website’s boss saying: “Hey Noel, you can admit its real
now.”

The name of one of the files indicates that it contains
nearly 14 gigabytes worth of data from the chief executive’s email account.

However, there is a problem with it.

The new upload contains a large file whose name indicates it
contain emails taken from Avid Life Media’s chief executive.

The archive in question has been compressed, and efforts to
expand it to normal size bring up an error message, “It’s in a zipped
format, and when I try to decompress the contents a message comes up saying it
won’t work,” Per Thorsheim, chief executive of cybersecurity firm God
Praksis, told the BBC.

“I can’t yet say why.”

Several security Companies have independently verified that
the archive appears to be damaged.

Other files, however, can be viewed.

Mr Thorsheim said they appeared to contain collections of
computer instructions.

“The one that I opened up – Avid.tgz – looks to me like
source code,” Mr Thorsheim said.

“I can’t say [for sure] that it’s from Ashley Madison,
but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.”

Another security firm that has taken a cursory look at these
files highlighted the threat they could pose.

“If this turns out to be legitimate, which it in all
aspects appears to be, having full source code to these websites means that
other hacker groups now have the ability to find new flaws in Avid Life’s
websites, and further compromise them more,” wrote Dave Kennedy, chief
executive of TrustedSec, on his firm’s blog.

Ashley Madison’s owner, Avid Life Media, could not be
reached for comment.