Toronto: At least two suicides may be connected to the hacking of the Ashley Madison cheating website that exposed the information of clients, and its parent company is offering a reward of C$500,000 (about Dh1.4 million) to catch the hackers, Toronto police said on Monday.

In addition to the exposure of the Ashley Madison accounts of as many as 37 million users, the attack on the infidelity website has sparked extortion attempts and at least two unconfirmed suicides, Toronto Police Acting Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans told a news conference.

The data dump contained email addresses of U.S. government officials, UK civil servants, and workers at European and North American corporations, taking already deep-seated fears about Internet security and data protection to a new level.