Two suicides may be linked to Ashley Madison hacking, police say

At least two suicides may be linked to the hacking of extramarital affairs website Ashley Madison, which exposed the personal information of millions of users, Toronto police said on Monday.

“As of this morning, we have two unconfirmed reports of suicides that are associated because of the leak of Ashley Madison customers’ profiles,” Toronto police acting staff superintendent Bryce Evans said at a press conference. 

The hacking is being investigated by the Toronto police in conjunction with other law enforcement services. The unconfirmed suicides are being investigated by law enforcement in the jurisdictions where they occurred. 

Police declined to provide any more details on the apparent suicides, saying they received the unconfirmed reports on Monday morning. Evans said the hack is having an "enormous social and economic fallout." He also said hate crimes may be connected to the hack but did not provide details.

"This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world," Evans said. "This is affecting all of us. The social impact behind this leak — we're talking about families, we're talking about their children, we're talking about their wives, we're talking about their male partners." 

The hackers who took responsibility for the digital breach accused the website's owners of deceit and incompetence and said the company refused to bow to their demands to close the site. The hackers referred to themselves as the Impact Team.

Evans said the hackers released the entire Ashley Madison client list, which claims more than 30 million users worldwide. He said the hackers sent a taunting message to the company CEO and released his emails.

Evans said there are confirmed cases of criminals attempting to extort Ashley Madison clients by threatening to expose them unless payment is received. He addressed the hackers directly, saying their actions are "illegal and will not be tolerated."

"This is your wake-up call," he said.

The company behind Ashley Madison is offering a reward of 500,000 Canadian dollars (US$378,000) for information leading to the arrest of the hackers.

A representative of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security attended the news conference. Special Agent Ron Marcello of Homeland Security Investigations said Toronto police asked for assistance, adding that the FBI has taken the lead on the investigation.

U.S. government employees with sensitive jobs in national security or law enforcement were among hundreds of federal workers found to be using government networks to access and pay membership fees to Ashley Madison, the Associated Press reported last week.

"This is worldwide," Evans said. "We're looking at bringing in top security investigators from around the world to assist."

Al Jazeera and wire services