Millions of would-be adulterers at risk of being exposed following AshleyMadison.com hack

This is awkward (or karma?): AshleyMadison.com, a website for would-be adulterers whose motto is "Life is short, have an affair," has been hacked, threatening the security of its millions of users, Bloomberg reports. A group calling itself "The Impact Team" claimed responsibility for the attack, posting a banner on AshleyMadison.com threatening to publish "all customer records, profiles with all the customers' secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures, conversations and matching credit card transactions, real names, and addresses" unless AshleyMadison.com and its peer site, EstablishedMen.com, are taken off the web.

The sites' parent company, Avid Life, claims it has closed any security holes, but it comes too late for information the hackers may have already transferred elsewhere. The hack comes just as Avid Life was preparing to go public with AshleyMadison.com, which reported sales of $115 million last year.

While there could be some uncomfortable conversations for cheaters in the days ahead (including those who forked over $20 for AshleyMadison.com's "full delete" option to erase user information), others see the attack as being the price you pay for dishonesty — and stupidity.

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"For Christ's sake, if you're going to cheat don't do it online and leave yourself open," Rik Turner, an analyst at technology researcher Ovum in London, told Bloomberg. "Unless you've been living in a cave for the past few years and not reading a paper or receiving any TV signal, it should be obvious that everything is hackable."