What methods were used to hack Ashley Madison?

The Ashley Madison website, known for facilitating extramarital affairs, was hacked in July 2015 by a group calling themselves The Impact Team. The methods the hackers used to infiltrate the site's defenses have not been publicly detailed by the culprits or confirmed through comprehensive reports. However, it is speculated that they may have utilized several common hacking techniques such as social engineering, phishing scams aimed at employees to gain initial access, exploitation of weak points in the website's infrastructure, or perhaps the use of zero-day vulnerabilities—previously unknown flaws in software that can be exploited by attackers before developers become aware and issue fixes. Once inside the system, the hackers extracted sensitive data from Ashley Madison's databases, including user profiles and other confidential information. They later released this data on the internet, causing significant personal and reputational damage to individuals involved.