In July 2015, the hacker collective known as The Impact Team gained root‑level access to Avid Life Media’s on‑premises servers and exfiltrated over 60 GB of Ashley Madison data—36 million user profiles, payment records (including “Full Delete” transactions), password hashes, internal source code, and corporate emails. The archive was published via darknet torrents, triggering massive reputational damage, multiple investigations (FTC, Canadian authorities), and multimillion‑dollar settlements