Netflix’s new true crime documentary Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, & Scandal covers not only the Ashley Madison platform and its users but also the hackers who brought the site to public attention. The documentary discusses the dating site for extramarital affairs, starting from its inception and diving into its involvement in several cheating incidents, including Ashley Madison’s part in the Dugger Family scandal. However, the largest focus of the documentary was on the hackers who got into the websites’ servers and exposed much of Ashley Madison’s shocking information.
The hackers, known as The Impact Team, hacked into Ashley Madison in 2015, logging the employees of the site out of their servers. When the hackers demanded a ransom from Ashley Madison to regain their information, the company refused. However, even after hiring international experts, their client information was leaked online, leaving the scandalized Ashley Madison devastated as the hackers were never caught.
The hackers who attacked Ashley Madison were never caught, according to the Netflix crime documentaryAshley Madison: Sex, Lies, & Scandal. After The Impact Team compromised the servers, Ashley Madison attempted to sweep the accusations of a hack under the rug. Despite this, the hackers released more and more valid information to the dark web throughout August of that year. The hack resulted in many subsequent scandals involving the site’s clientele and their families, including Christian influencers Sam and Nia. Ultimately, investigators were unable to find any concrete leads on The Impact Team, though much speculation about their identities abounded.
Though little is known about The Impact Team, the Netflix true-crime series does discuss the speculation surrounding their motives, including if the hack could be an inside job. Before the Ashley Madison hack, The Impact Team did not appear to exist and, after the information was released, the group seemed to vanish. Their demands also caught the police off guard, as stated in the documentary, since The Impact Team only demanded $500,000. This made little sense to investigators as the site was making quite a bit of money at the time, as it was projected to earn $150 million in revenue in 2015.
The documentary highlighted the theory that, due to the low ransom, The Impact Team may actually be a single individual. Additionally, that individual may have been an employee or user of the site, considering the speed of the hack and the individuals who ended up being targeted. Though their identity remains a mystery, Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, & Scandal highlights the result of The Impact Team’s actions, which exposed many users but failed to take the platform down as intended.