{"id":59524,"date":"2015-08-20T22:52:33","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T14:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=59524"},"modified":"2025-01-10T07:31:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T12:31:00","slug":"hackers-expose-millions-on-cheating-site-some-in-us-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/08\/20\/hackers-expose-millions-on-cheating-site-some-in-us-govt\/","title":{"rendered":"Hackers expose millions on cheating site; some in US gov\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ashley<\/a>
Ashley Madison, a matchmaking website for cheating spouses. (Facebook photo<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LONDON \u2013 Hackers say they have exposed unfaithful partners across the world, posting what they said were the personal details of millions of people registered with cheating website Ashley Madison.<\/p>\n

A message posted by the hackers alongside their massive trove accused Ashley Madison\u2019s owners of deceit and incompetence and said the company had refused to bow to their demands to close the site.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow everyone gets to see their data,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Ashley Madison has long courted attention with its claim to be the Internet\u2019s leading facilitator of extramarital liaisons, boasting of having nearly 39 million members and that \u201cthousands of cheating wives and cheating husbands sign up every day looking for an affair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Its owner, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc., has previously acknowledged suffering an electronic break-in and said in a statement Tuesday it was investigating the hackers\u2019 claim. U.S. and Canadian law enforcement are involved in the probe, the company said.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press wasn\u2019t immediately able to determine the authenticity of the leaked files, although many analysts who have scanned the data believe it is genuine.<\/p>\n

TrustedSec Chief Executive Dave Kennedy said the information dump included full names, passwords, street addresses, credit card information and \u201can extensive amount of internal data.\u201d In a separate blog, Errata Security Chief Executive Rob Graham said the information released included details such as users\u2019 height, weight and GPS coordinates. He said men outnumbered women on the service five-to-one.<\/p>\n

Avid Life Media declined to comment Wednesday beyond its statement. The hackers also didn’t immediately return emails.<\/p>\n

The prospect of millions of adulterous partners being publicly shamed drew widespread attention but the sheer size of the database \u2013 and the technical savvy needed to navigate it \u2013 means it\u2019s unlikely to lead to an immediate rush to divorce courts.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless this Ashley Madison information becomes very easily accessible and searchable, I think it is unlikely that anyone but the most paranoid or suspecting spouses will bother to seek out this information,\u201d New York divorce attorney Michael DiFalco said in an email. \u201cThere are much simpler ways to confirm their suspicions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Graham and others said many of the Ashley Madison profiles appeared to be bogus, it\u2019s clear the leak was huge. Troy Hunt, who runs a website that warns people when their private information is exposed online, said nearly 5,000 users had received alerts stemming from the breach.<\/p>\n

Although many may have signed up out of curiosity and some have little more to fear than embarrassment, the consequences for others could reverberate beyond their marriages. The French leak monitoring firm CybelAngel said it counted 1,200 email addresses in the data dump with the .sa suffix, suggesting users were connected to Saudi Arabia, where adultery is punishable by death.<\/p>\n

CybelAngel also said it counted some 15,000 .gov or .mil addresses in the dump, suggesting that American soldiers, sailors and government employees had opened themselves up to possible blackmail. Using a government email to register for an adultery website may seem foolish, but CybelAngel Vice President of Operations Damien Damuseau said there was a certain logic to it.<\/p>\n

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Using a professional address, he said, keeps the messages out of personal accounts \u201cwhere their partner might see them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that dumb,\u201d Damuseau said.<\/p>\n

How many of the people registered with Ashley Madison actually used the site to seek sex outside their marriage is an unresolved question.<\/p>\n

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But whatever the final number, the breach is still a humbling moment for Ashley Madison, which had made discretion a key selling point. In a television interview last year, Chief Executive Noel Biderman described the company\u2019s servers as \u201ckind of untouchable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hackers\u2019 motives aren\u2019t entirely clear, although they have accused Ashley Madison of creating fake female profiles and of keeping users\u2019 information on file even after they paid to have it deleted. In its statement, Avid Life Media accused the hackers of seeking to impose \u201ca personal notion of virtue on all of society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham, the security expert, had a simpler theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all probability, their motivation is that 1 I\u2019s fun, and 2 because they can,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Technology Writer Bree Fowler in New York contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2013 Hackers say they have exposed unfaithful partners across the world, posting what they said were the personal details …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":56636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,5],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-59524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-technology","tag-original","mauthors-raphael-satter","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282189,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59524\/revisions\/282189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}