Second wave of Ashley Madison data published

A second wave of personal data alleged to have come from adultery website Ashley Madison has been published online by the site's hackers.

The Impact Team, the hacking group which claims to have breached the site's database and posted millions of user details to the remote dark web earlier this week, has now uploaded a second cache of data, this time focusing on the website's staff and architecture.

According to reports, this latest leak included a message that read: "Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now", in reference to Noel Biderman, the CEO of Ashley Madison's parent company Avid Life Media (ALM).

However, dark web users who tried to download the folder claiming to be Mr Biderman's email archive were met with an error message informing them the file was corrupt and could not be opened - a message seen and then widely reported on social media.

The rest of the data in the latest leak is said to be source code for the website, detailing how Ashley Madison is built, and the security around it.

Dave Kennedy, head of cyber security firm TrustedSec wrote on his site's blog that if the post is genuine it could mean further issues for ALM and Ashley Madison.

He said: "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.

"If there was any question to the validity of the data before - those should be removed now."

The new data dump comes as the first divorce proceedings in the UK caused by the leak have been instigated.

Family lawyer Nigel Shepard, a partner at law firm Mills and Reeve, told The Times that he had been contacted by a married woman seeking advice after discovering her partner's details among the leaked accounts.