Ashley Madison - 'Welcome to the first day of the rest of your internet'

http://www.theawl.com/2015/08/notes-on-the-ashley-madison-hack

background

1. A data dump, which allegedly contains over 35 million email addresses, 33 million accounts with more detailed information (names and addresses), and every credit card transaction from the last seven years, is reported to have been posted online. It could be doctored or entirely fake, however: a hack was previously confirmed by the company, and early signs point to legitimacy. (Update: Brian Krebs was unsure, but now seems convinced; Ashley Madison’s official statement is ambiguous.)

2. It is not easily accessible to most internet users—it’s still in fairly raw form, in massive downloadable archives.

3. However, 4chan users, and undoubtedly others, are already combing through data and posting their discoveries. They started by searching for people with government email addresses, university email addresses, and addresses associated with major corporations. This is unfolding very quickly, already revealing the email addresses of students, teachers, public servants and municipal employees.

global clusterfuck to follow

the note that was posted along with the leak:

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--RERfgadU--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/1391620928171645221.png

here's my carefully considered opinion on this: lol

Definite possible clusterfuck if the leak is real data -- but this is from 4 days ago, has there been actual fallout yet?

However, IMO this leak IS the first real "public" hack. If it wasn't Ashley Madison, it would be everyone's browsing history, or bank statements, or pay stubs, etc. Welcome to first day of the rest of your terrorism.

I admit it.

I was just too tempted by those little snackcakes on the Snoopy commercials.

here's my carefully considered opinion on this: lol

my initial reaction as well, but i felt bad when i realized i didn't consider some of the broader ramifications

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/19/dont-gloat-about-the-ashley-madison-leak-its-about-way-more-than-infidelity/

Cluley also wrote recently about the real risk that a leak could lead to suicide.

“What the howling wolves doesn’t seem to understand is what they are doing is online bullying. The kind of bullying that clearly can cause such personal tragedies,” he wrote.

“‘If they are cheating, they deserve it,’ the wolves reply. While I totally disagree with that argument, let me add that their kids do not deserve to lose a parent. Their family doesn’t deserve to lose a loved one. And that also applies to friends, colleagues, neighbors and others. If you are found to have bullied somebody into suicide however … I believe you deserve jailtime for that.”

And then there is another concern: that although the leak itself appears to be a moral vendetta, it could lead to individual cases of blackmail as people comb through the information and spot co-workers, neighbors or acquaintances.

By the time you read this, there is a good chance someone on 4chan will have figured out a way to make the leaked info searchable.

apparently this is a well-regarded security guy who says that he now believes the leaked date is real: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/08/was-the-ashley-madison-database-leaked/

i submit my recalibrated opinion: lmbo

man what kind of dork uses their real email address to sign up for an adultery website

"Please use this data responsibly."

Someone signed up with Tony Blair's email address though it quite possibly wasn't him.

Consequence-wise this is so much worse than any consumer hack in history it's difficult to not see it changing the way a lot of people behave online.

this is gonna take down a bunch of guilty people and a bunch of innocent people

i'm also astounded that there were 35 million+ accounts, even if a ton of them were bogus. i had never even heard of ashley madison til this leak., but apparently about 1 out of every 7 adults in the U.S. had an account (~240 million adults in U.S. / 35 million accounts)

is it just me or does the tone of that text file posted above read more than a little like some "men's rights" screed?

Not all those accounts are from the US.

xpost the gamergate people are already combing through looking for "social justice warriors"

In terms of the 'victims', this is sorta Gawker's expose of Geithner writ very large, involving people who are (presumably) mostly private citizens. So while it's tempting to get all high-horsey about it, it's pretty much just a massive violation of privacy that, as noted, potentially affects more than those people whose personal information was compromised.

I'd heard of it (they're a regular sponsor on Howard Stern's show), but 35 million does seem really high. And yeah, it seems funny to think of people using their actual email addresses, but if they're scrolling through the list looking for govt and university addresses, obv some people did. The aims of AM notwithstanding, this is absolutely bullying, blackmail, public terrorism. It doesn't make any difference why people signed up -- it's their life, not the hackers'. I assume this kind of thing will get worse before it gets better.

http://www.businessinsider.com/pirate-bay-is-serving-an-ashley-madison-ad-next-to-the-ashely-madison-data-dump-2015-8

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55d45968371d2278018c0c60-1605-955/ashleymadison.png

apparently the site didn't have email verification? so anyone could use anyone else's email address for their account

makes it hard to pin any accusations on public figures

ashley madison posted this today:

This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality. It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities. The criminal, or criminals, involved in this act have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society. We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world. We are continuing to fully cooperate with law enforcement to seek to hold the guilty parties accountable to the strictest measures of the law.

extract from washington post piece is super sobering imo

didn't lagoon write in another thread about the weird paucity of righteousness in hacking, ie things targeted at student loans say instead of just broadly aimed at big organisations. this feels like a kind of misdirected & accidentally moralistic righteous hack, sorta mirroring the gawker thing per old lunch.

apparently the site didn't have email verification? so anyone could use anyone else's email address for their account

― ciderpress, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 10:04 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

makes it hard to pin any accusations on public figures

― ciderpress

yeah, that was my initial thought as well, but i didn't realize that credit card/financial transactions were also leaked:

33 million accounts with more detailed information (names and addresses), and every credit card transaction from the last seven years, is reported to have been posted online

i don't think it would be too hard to make strong connections.

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/happened-hackers-posted-stolen-ashley-madison-data/

The files appear to include account details and log-ins for some 32 million users of the social networking site, touted as the premier site for married individuals seeking partners for affairs. Seven years worth of credit card and other payment transaction details are also part of the dump, going back to 2007. The data, which amounts to millions of payment transactions, includes names, street address, email address and amount paid, but not credit card numbers; instead it includes four digits for each transaction that may be the last four digits of the credit card or simply a transaction ID unique to each charge. AshleyMadison.com claimed to have nearly 40 million users at the time of the breach about a month ago, all apparently in the market for clandestine hookups.

the people who grabbed all this data justify dumping it because the site is "immoral" is a really bad look, imo

definitely.

The hackers deflected responsibility for any damages or repercussions that victims of the breach and data dump may suffer.

“Find yourself in here? It was ALM that failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and claim damages. Then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you’ll get over it,” they wrote.

justifying, I mean

that reason is about ten times stupider than saying they did it "for the lols"

Mumsnet ;_;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33985706

people I want to judge my "morality":
- people I do business with
- people who I have moral contracts with
- people I have a direct personal relationship with

note lack of "randos on the internet" in that list

the incident, called DadSecurity

I thought the justification was that they were charging users to delete accounts and lying about having done it?

The users seem like collateral damage rather than being the focus, which makes it even more stupid in some ways.

yeah this isn't really 'hacktivism', it's just hacking, for lack of a better term

they have used a variety of justifications, all of which hold tiny amounts of water

it feels like an episode of black mirror

some other revelation needs to happen to really make this black mirror-esque

like finding out people really didn't use it for cheating but for some sort of complicated investment scheme

the ppl publishing this list are doing something much worse than the people they are trying to expose, it's prurient & self-righteous in the worst way

this will probably have an effect on the elections

write in votes for Ashley Madison

for sure, some political types are definitely ridiculous enough to have accounts on this

I mean, some have already proven themselves brazen enough to just hit on people on twitter or w/e, Ashley Madison is practically subtle in comparison to some of the shenanigans out there

i bet there were like 30-35 actual affairs conducted out of all this

Yeah, I wondered about that. A whole lotta lookers but not a whole lotta takers.

*shakes fist* where are the horney internet wives

tell me if you ever figure that one out!

is it just me or does the tone of that text file posted above read more than a little like some "men's rights" screed?

It does have the vibe of a jilted gent, refusing to be mocked or patronized! after he gets spammed for the 30th time.

https://ashley.cynic.al/

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/19/snp-mp-michelle-thomsons-data-hack-adultury-ashley-madison

adultury

grauniad strikes again

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/19/how-democrats-and-republicans-advertise-themselves-on-ashley-madison/?postshare=9621440011689864

Surprised "Intelligent.Introverted.Chivalrous.Ultralibertarian.Atheist" wasn't on an escort site instead of AM.

classic: "There were also mentions of Mitt Romney. One reads simply 'romney'. The other..."

https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/3ebzzj/i_may_get_stoned_to_death_for_gay_sex_gay_man/

gonna see if i can never find out who AM is

You never will because it's not a person

there ya go

Prominent divorce lawyer Raoul Felder said the release is the best thing to happen to his profession since the biblical Seventh Commandment: do not commit adultery.

"I've never had anything like this before," he said.

so she was caught lip-syncing on the Simpsons. big deal.

gonna see if i can never find out who AM is

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, August 19, 2015 2:01 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You never will because it's not a person

― polyphonic, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 2:06 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://lparchive.org/I-Have-No-Mouth-and-I-Must-Scream/Update%201/img-2.gif

fuck these hackers and fuck everybody I know posting this jubilantly today.

just heard about mh's reddit post from a friend. shit like *that* is why this is fucked, that and the whole mass presumptions and internet morality police performing a service that nobody requested that will likely take down a shitload of innocent people down with the guilty.

(the post he shared, obv he didn't make it)

'Keep in mind the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles. See ashley madison fake profile lawsuit; 90-95% of actual users are male. Chances are your man signed up on the world’s biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters.'

i mean, who cares then? what's the point? is it that different from i don't know... watching porn? how many users on the website are actually married? how much actual cheating was derived from the website? Seriously I am starting to think hackers are really just bunch of 14 years olds.

you ol' romantic, van horn street

attempted illicit fucking

with female bots

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSyG5wtPh7I5s4DEfxItvRZyB95Y-YgdYPWJvqkb7HXxxmeCbrs
I am not amused by this development.

Funny, given the male/female ratio, that my two of my three friends with registered email addresses are women.

Three friends:
1) Finance guy, European, married to a friend of mine, two kids at home. European, so permitted swinging? Who knows.
2) Lawyer, gal, adventurous online dater between two marriages (and more than between?).
3) Arty gal, adventurous dater, never married.

What's an adventurous dater? First-date BDSM?

Just frequent dates and frequent action.

skydiving

*guitar squeal*

when i first heard of 'ashley madison', conflated it with 'laura ashley'
so to me 'ashley madison' always evokes prim flowery dresses

two of my three friends with registered email addresses are women

interesting (though upon reflection, not so interesting/surprising), i.e. why some women prefer to 'adventurously date' married men

http://gawker.com/family-values-activist-josh-duggar-had-a-paid-ashley-ma-1725132091

that duggar guy is an asshole and a sex criminal but gawker should really just not talk about this at all right

the scale of relationship devastation & personal humiliation going on worldwide right now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g5Hz17C4is

xxp, short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but

that duggar guy is an asshole and a sex criminal but gawker should really just not talk about this at all right

otm

probably cool to not link their stories where they reward hackers for their work by id'ing people's private data on "hey, it's out there!" ground

given that someone has posted a link that allows you to search the leak by email address itt i don't think linking to a gawker article can really be considered beyond the pale in this context

true true

fuck these hackers and fuck everybody I know posting this jubilantly today.

― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 5:50 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm happy ilx is anti-hackers. i was reading gawker comments on this earlier (i know, it's a sickness) and the number of people there fire and brimstoning the "cheating assholes" was staggering.

'Keep in mind the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles. See ashley madison fake profile lawsuit; 90-95% of actual users are male. Chances are your man signed up on the world’s biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters.'

i mean, who cares then? what's the point? is it that different from i don't know... watching porn? how many users on the website are actually married? how much actual cheating was derived from the website? Seriously I am starting to think hackers are really just bunch of 14 years olds.

Just been thinking while reading through this that The Good Wife had a story about an adultery site. So did that reflect there having been an earlier adultery site related scandal? I think to some extent they reflect what's in the news at the time of writing. Could have just been some public exposure that such sites exist.
I can't recall what season that was or what exactly the case concerning the adultery site was. Maybe just about anonymity or subsequent cover up of existing lack of potential partners?

Just reposting this titbit from ^^^^

European, so permitted swinging?

wtfuckingactualf

In other news, the "I was hacked when I ended up on the list" stories from politicians have started.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-33999675

maybe i'm naive but the gleeful way the site actually advertised itself (pre-hack) on Facebook was pretty o_0. looked like it was being run by a bunch of giggling fratboys. i mean.. i dunno what i was expecting but at least a modicum of 'sophistication' or something.

have you ever met an actual sophisticated person in this life

Greenwald invokes Hester Prynne, Max:

It’s hard to overstate the devastation to some people’s lives from having their names published as part of this hack: not only to their relationships with their spouses and children but to their careers, reputations, and – depending on where they live – possibly their liberty or even life. What appears on the internet is permanent and inescapable. All of the people whose names appear in this data base will now be permanently branded with a digital “A.” Whether they actually did what they are accused of will be irrelevant: digital lynch mobs offer no due process or appeals. And it seems certain that many of the people whose lives are harmed, or ruined, by this hack will have been guilty of nothing.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/20/puritanical-glee-ashley-madison-hack/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6473d-X-PQM

a friend of mine's personal stuff was leaked! he's a media/programmer guy and (at least claims) he was testing login interfaces for various dating sites. he's not married anyways, and seems to find the whole thing amusing.

my dummy account was in the leak

i feel so famous and licentious!!

for unrelated purposes i made a rare login to my dummy email account, which i used to sign up for the dummy adultery account, and found that, lol, there was recent mail from ashley madison and the account delete i did never took

why did you sign up?

for the adultery account. i'm not sure what dummy account means.

shoppin around for a side board?

i read some story about the site and i wanted to see how adultery-website ppl were different from all the other meet-ppl-to-sleep-w-them ppl from other websites

what did you learn?

well it's all a funhouse of uncertainty of course

ppl are ppl

so y shud it b

My wife just informed me that leaked names from here include my name but with a billing address in Toronto. Wasn't planning on looking at this stuff beyond what can't be avoided when looking at news on the Internet or whatever, but should I be concerned? Fake profile perhaps?

what do you mean by funhouse of uncertainty? did you sleep with any married women?

Just to clarify, it's not me and not a dummy acct. Had never heard of AM until all this biz.

I wonder how many people have signed up in the last few days.

andrew can you check to see what the credit card number (the last 4 digits) at least is that's associated with your name/email?

how did your wife bring it up...?

also i signed up for a related one at almost the same time, i get kind of confused about which was which

one was much more like a thirst trap for unsuspecting creditcard holders, seemed to have seeded the listings with lots of probably fake succulent 20-year-olds

the proper adultery one had a surprising number of, like, schlubby 30-40-something midwesterners, way out of proportion to what you see on dating websites or plain old sex websites

though there were still a certain amount of people who clearly put an emphasis on fitness/body specifically for sex-related purposes

and the level of frankness about the reason for cheating was fairly high. whereas you might see a lot of poly-leaning talk on many other sites, and there was a little bit of swinger/open marriage talk on this one, really it was more a lot of unmet needs / sex part of my marriage is over / just have to have a thrill stuff. not very defensively either, though there was an undertone of that sometimes.

xp she IM'd me a little bit ago haha. I'll see about the email/credit card stuff when I get home. Hopefully it's nothing to worry about.

haha no dylannn i would never, it's just that most of these sites seem to fake / juke the listings, maybe even show stock photos of people not in your locality, to generate the impression that there are sooo maaaaany hoottttt willllllling ppl out there

one of these sites i looked at, ashley madison i think, also had a prominent kept-young-hottie contingent, sugar daddies, etc., even some that stipulated explicitly looking for someone to pay for college and getting companionship but no sex out of the deal

cannot comprehend using an official or work email to sign up for a sex site

your mind lacks the unique dumbness

so when "adultery" became "legal" in south korea, the korean version of ashley madison went live and it had thousands upon thousands of sign ups. i want to read the story of the leaked information of korean husbands and wives more than the north american one, though it's all too amusing

why did you put adultery in "quotes"

feel like there are a number of reasons people seek out infidelity instead of leaving a relationship that are mundane and depressing and not well-represented in the ashley madison marketing

corsets and lipstick pretty well represented, though

why did you put adultery in "quotes"

― j., Thursday, August 20, 2015 10:55 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because korean laws are a mindfuck...i don't want to derail this thread. if you're interested, there are tonnes of fun resources explaining this weird law

"adultery" being an act that's more social convention than legal one, codifying it as legal/illegal is kind of ridiculous, although possibly less so in cultures where coupling is more of an arranged structure than a romanticized ideal

looks like a good court for dealing with adultery in

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/02/27/world/27korea/27korea-master675.jpg

andrew, couldn't it have just been another dude with the same name?

Or is that the joke.

The joke is that everyone believes him

I've met, he's definitely not Canadian.

You met him. Who you didn't meet was "theTorontoBronco77"

I love hackers. Hack the planet.

Understand people being worried about the effects on the users now exposed, but not sad to see a business based on such an unpleasant moral basis have its model effectively wrecked

what if last of summer wine modarn day? Howard go on ahsley madison get found out by pearl

I just found a review of the Good Wife episode Getting Off which is the adultery site one. http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/the-good-wife-getting-off-55741 it mentions Ashley Madison by name and talks about previous notoriety. That's dated May 2011.
I was just wondering if Ashley Madison had been the one site to have previous media notoriety prior to the current story. I haven't really heard of other sites than theirs but wouldn't really be looking anyway.
So if their site was mentioned by name 4 there years ago, it does look like they have some history of scandal.

Were they well known for it, like was it a well known name for people here prior to the current scandal?

Well yeah, they're Ashley Madison - you've literally never heard of them before?

NOt really something that crosses my radar I don't think. Are they International? Could be me not being in the US that influences that too.

They had a few publicity stunts, like trying to get a Super Bowl commercial and getting turned down by the NFL, that boosted their profile.

i hadn't heard of ashley madison before either.

I still can't believe they were *actually* going to do a Super Bowl commercial (and also find it hard to believe that the NFL would reject anyone's money) - what they actually did was pretty effective. That's the first time I started hearing about the site.

sure

andrew, couldn't it have just been another dude with the same name?

That's prob the case, yes. Just got concerned someone had used my email or whatever. They didn't, so it's all good. Now I'm dropping it before my wife says I protesteth too mucheth.

"theTorontoBronco77"

haha

:)

"I ain't ever even been to Toronto. You can ask my wife!"

http://i.imgur.com/MYF81X4.jpg

gets me every time

http://i.imgur.com/ugMeAUQ.jpg

"What a world we live in. I guess we'll have to reset all of our passwords."

but really there are more women named "ashley madison" in the US than there were affairs conducted on this site. i thought everyone knew it was a scam.

lol ron is stunned

I can not find a woman actually named "Ashley Madison" right now. That's nuts.

""ashley madison" -cheating -adultry -hack -infidelity -dump -hackers -membership"

i knew about ashley madison because a friend's band has a song called "ashley madison account"

always found it strange to contemplate the meetings at which "ashley madison" was deigned to be a name at the right confluence of "classy" and "adventurous"

top 2 most popular girls' names at the time, no pretence at class

like a debutante president

might be worth searching for ppl called like ashleigh maddison or w/e

like a debutante president

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdmmQX3UlMw

might be worth searching for ppl called like ashleigh maddison or w/e

who knows what could happen!

imago that explanation is both a relief and a lil disappointing

thought they were operating at a higher level or creepiness :/

*of

brb googling 'various double-glazing techniques'

^ One of the selectable interestes on Ashley Madison iirc.

cuidado

brb googling 'various double-glazing techniques'

Listen, I already made the Dolly Madison joke upthread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/3hscsp/metadata_analysis_of_ashley_madisons_vancouver/

haha 146 men chasing 2 women in vancouver. seriously, dawg? come on. this really rustles my jimmies.

it's a double-whammy.

people fall into big co's trap, because big co is thirsty for money, and big co nicely illustrates a large population's immoral, disgusting behaviour.

keep it classy, humanity

if you're interested in a double-whammy, just pm jjj

lol

that's inappropriate

article of the decade right here

http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/08/heres-what-ashley-madison-members-have.html

two suicides reported in Toronto, potentially connected to this.

and, apparently they just released a searchable list for Orlando publicly. a friend of mine at karaoke the other night actually looked up one of the other people in the room, found them in the data dump, then outed him to ten or so other people in the room (discreetly, via FB). One of whom was the KJ who actually (without naming names) name-dropped the Orlando list as a discreet hint. suffice it to say I left not long after that.

yes, fuck this hack and fuck these assholes. they can't claim to be any kind of social justice warriors considering the net they cast was wide enough to drag down lots of innocent people with the 'bad' folk they tarred.

also fuck the people that run this predatory scam site to begin with.

your friend sounds like trash of the highest order. you can tell them i said that, and you don't need to do it discreetly over facebook

otm

yeah it was royally fucked. not even really a friend, more an acquaintance, and that is enough for me to not want to associate with them anymore.

of course it's impossible to have any conversation about this without encountering the Broad Brush Brigade ("well they shoulda thought about that before they cheated!").

so what happens when someone gets a death threat or other hate mail at their physical mail address and their kids see it? Kid's fault for their dad being a cheater, rite?

I was about to say something about some people loving drama, then remembered -- is this your group of actor friends?

nope

that Troy Hunt article is solid. paints an even handed picture, even acknowledges some regrets about the searchable dump they created. I have to dig into it more but it does really cover the gamete of reactions to this scenario.

gamete of reactions bahahaha

gamergate of reactions

skimming e-mail excerpts in the troy hunt thing is pretty harrowing

I think it was Dan Savage who mentioned that for many people, signing up for a site like AM was in itself a kind of fantasy or daydream of infidelity that probably stopped way short of any actual affairs. Which made me realize that the number of honest to god serial cheaters involved in this is probably a pretty small number compared to the greater number of unhappy monogamists who let a fantasy go too far into reality--which is to say people who are flawed but deeply normal and sympathetic except for trusting an Internet site with their credit card info.

That's an overwhelming concern. The other being that the hackers decided to take something that spouses would typically handle themselves in private and make it public news to a bunch of strangers who didn't fucking need to know it.

agree with HSB in this thread but i don't think the hackers were really trying to justify themselves beyond the level of prurient oneupmanship. it should be pretty obvious to pretty much everyone that they're cunts for doing this

Lack of support from Avid Life Media

Troy Hunt article def not funny, but admit I did let go a lol at this

This is amazing.

Stepping back from the ruined lives and the embarrassment and the shame, this is an amazing look at these singular moments of one person sitting in front of a computer, deciding how they're going to go about paying for this service. Making that choice to go in on it.

I keep seeing over and over things like

AMERICAN EXPRESS GIFT CARD | anon1982_✧✧✧@a✧✧.c✧✧ | 4388 Duckett Lane APT 2F, Springdale, AR, 72988

is there anything to determine for sure in this case that's that guy's real street address and not one he just picked at random out of the phone book?

quick google says that zip code doesn't exist (too high for arkansas, too low for oklahoma), there's no duckett lane in arizona, etc. i don't know whyt i am looknig tihs up but the "apt 2f" is a nice touch, and i am surprised that the site let him enter a non-existent zip code, liek don't they usually have a thing that blocks you from doing that? as a canadian who had to sign up to things in the past i had to actually like research where zip codes were to make fake accounts to download music or whatever

If they don't require email verification, they probably dgaf about anything beyond whether your payment clears.

I think pp made up that address as an example

oh i am smart

Yes.

I mean, I'm not going to start posting real names and addresses.

If they don't require email verification, they probably dgaf about anything beyond whether your payment clears.

My favorite address field so far has been something like "What, you mean my real address?" listed.

but the "apt 2f" is a nice touch

Thank you!

as a canadian who had to sign up to things in the past i had to actually like research where zip codes were to make fake accounts to download music or whatever

easiest to just always go with 90210. not that i have done this. least of all with my ashley madison account

90210 worked, i usually went with a 10 or 11 new york one because i knew my aunt's old address

http://gizmodo.com/almost-none-of-the-women-in-the-ashley-madison-database-1725558944

hilarious

I started my search in an obvious place. Were there any patterns in the personal email addresses that people listed when they signed up? I figured that if I were an admin at Ashley Madison creating fake profiles, I would use ashleymadison.com for the email addresses because it’s easy and obvious. No real Ashley Madison customer would have an Ashley Madison company email. So I searched for any email address that ended in ashleymadison.com. Bingo. There were about 10 thousand accounts with ashleymadison.com email addresses.

looooool

About two-thirds of the men, or 20.2 million of them, had checked the messages in their accounts at least once. But only 1,492 women had ever checked their messages. It was a serious anomaly.

...

Overall, the picture is grim indeed. Out of 5.5 million female accounts, roughly zero percent had ever shown any kind of activity at all, after the day they were created.

The men’s accounts tell a story of lively engagement with the site, with over 20 million men hopefully looking at their inboxes, and over 10 million of them initiating chats. The women’s accounts show so little activity that they might as well not be there.

Sure, some of these inactive accounts were probably created by real, live women (or men pretending to be women) who were curious to see what the site was about. Some probably wanted to find their cheating husbands. Others were no doubt curious journalists like me. But they were still overwhelmingly inactive. They were not created by women wanting to hook up with married men. They were static profiles full of dead data, whose sole purpose was to make men think that millions of women were active on Ashley Madison.

i would just like to point out that i have been otm in this thread

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/08/who-hacked-ashley-madison/

The Toronto cops mostly recapped the timeline of known events in the hack, but they did add one new wrinkle: They said Avid Life employees first learned about the breach on July 12 (seven days before my initial story) when they came into work, turned on their computers and saw a threatening message from the Impact Team accompanied by the anthem “Thunderstruck” by Australian rock band AC/DC playing in the background.

well, I'm on Team Hacker now

they should have led off their manifesto with that tidbit

dang, mr ashley madison is gonna be sued into oblivion

Has anyone come up with an estimate for how many actual affairs came about through AM?

how would anyone on earth know that? jeeze

http://gawker.com/5928591/back-in-hack-computer-researcher-stumped-by-acdc-virus-at-iranian-nuclear-facilities

well, I'm on Team Hacker now

― frogbs, Wednesday, August 26, 2015 9:43 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

steady on now

it should be utterly plain that such a site would be a corrupt, exploitative sausagefest

this isn't the issue here

well, I'm on Team Hacker now

― frogbs, Wednesday, August 26, 2015 10:43 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why? the people they attacked were the users of the site. if they gave a shit about the corrupt nature of the site owners they'd have just rendered the damn thing unusable.

so in summary most of the action anybody got was a little self tug-tug while staring at fake women.

in other words....

ARIANE

Krusty: Ooh! Sex Chat! (dials)
Voice: You've reached the Party Line! In a moment, you'll be connected to a hot party, with some of the world's most beautiful women! Now, let's join the party!
Krusty: Hello?
Man 1: Hello?
Man 2: Hello?
Apu: Are there any women here?
Krusty: Hello!?
Apu: Are you a beautiful woman?
Krusty: Do I sound like a beautiful woman?
Apu: This is not as hot a party as I anticipated.

why? the people they attacked were the users of the site. if they gave a shit about the corrupt nature of the site owners they'd have just rendered the damn thing unusable.

yeah I'm not condoning any of this I just think the AC/DC is a nice touch

Nazareth "Hair of the Dog" woulda been better

timing of this couldn't be better for Ashley Monroe's career tbh

meh...it is what it is. hacktivism will never cease to exist.

groups like cDc will continue to go against laws and the 'norm', both written and unwritten. but hopefully we can keep discussing ethics and morality more openly.

it's silly to think we can 'fix' these people or 'stop' h4x0rs

what's bizarre is people continue to do things on their machines or on the internet as if there were no trace of their actions

people in my hometown of conservative upper middle class gossip hounds are freaking out about this. I highly regret looking at the paid list. saw a bunch of friends' dads. it's quite scary that literally no data is safe. everyone has embarrassing shit buried in gchats or text. whoever compared this to a black mirror episode is otm.

When AM hit critical mass enough to get that brand recognition, every network security person I know was saying "wow, they're going to be the biggest black mail hacker target in existence."

what's bizarre is people continue to do things on their machines or on the internet as if there were no trace of their actions

^^^^^^^^

sad/screwed up that they even offered a "forget me" package for sale which they got tens of thousands of people to pay for (and obviously did not delete the data), at the very least there should be a class-action lawsuit that they lied on that one

there's already a $500+ milli class-action lawsuit happening... and apparently an AC/DC-loving suspect?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/security-blogger-may-have-new-lead-in-ashley-madison-hacking/?_r=0

"Yeah. But remember, we're the thunderstruck bandits. The thunderstruck bandits. T-H-U..."
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/christmasspecials/images/3/3d/Home-alone-17.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111109000314

i don't want to discount how awesome that Thunderstruck bit is
magnificent

http://boingboing.net/2015/08/26/ashley-madison-looks-like-it-w.html

An analysis of the accounts indicates that there were 20,000,000 men active on the site and 1,492 women regularly checking messages.

makes me curious about this article - http://www.gq.com/story/ashley-madison-affair-cheating-site

lol good to see short fiction getting a platform in a big mag like GQ

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/8/ashley-madison-users-are-getting-off-too-easy.html

lmao for sure man

waiting for this article to be written: "No females on Ashley Madison. Where women have affairs"

http://gizmodo.com/the-fembots-of-ashley-madison-1726670394?utm_content=buffer25590&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

On June 27, 2013, in an email thread with the subject line “how angels are made, ”Noel Biderman scolded some of his employees for failing to create a decent automated process for making angels:

I will tell you what the flaw is—simply listening to hourly employees complaints and then building an unmanageable system around their so called “creativity” block when all that needed to be done was to hire a group of language related individuals to manually build X number of profiles over the span of y month(s) and then have someone on the photo side add relevant and reliable images.

What has been created now is a bureaucratic convoluted nightmare of a process that not only takes longer, costs more money, involves more “management” and ultimately produces a worse product.

Over a year and half ago I approached the two of you to try to automate this system as I did not want to have a CSR level rep making mistakes that lead to transparency issues that they could not comprehend the impact of.

Our ability to productize this approach failed but this nightmare of a quagmire stops now. We just need to learn how to properly staff up for a project and then staff down ...

it was like the internet entrepreneur's fantasy turned into its opposite

lol so Biderman resigned AND his leaked emails revealed his own affairs and escort hookups.

http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2459/2693/original.gif

A HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

http://consumerist.com/2016/02/02/ashley-madison-offering-profile-photo-masks-rendering-users-completely-unrecognizable-to-their-loved-ones/

A HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

http://i.imgur.com/KzB4C0O.png

THE FUCK IS THAT.

XD

"Well, first... ok? Number one - why would anyone hack it again? I mean, they already got everyone's deets the first time, right? And two - hear me out, the second thing, see... they've got this new MASK feature turned on."

http://i.imgur.com/OTuSDB0.jpg

myspace so classic

How do they still have subscribers after revealing that all the Ashleys were fake?

i'm afraid i'll be laughing all night now

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/four-plus-years-later-ashley-madison-hack-is-used-in-new-extortion-scam/

In the past two weeks, researchers have detected “several hundred” emails that threaten to air those intimate details to the world unless the former subscribers’ pay a hefty fee.
“I know everything about you,” one of the emails, dated January 15, says. “I even know that you ordered some … let’s call them ‘male assistance products’ online on 12/11/2018 using your account at Bank of America N,a routing# 121000358 account# [redacted] for $75 for mailing to [redacted] CA [redacted]!” The extortionist goes on to say: “If you do not act very fast your full AMadison profile and proof of it will be shared with friends, family, and online over social media—and of course your internet orders.”

...Despite the damage done to millions of users and years of unfavorable news coverage that resulted, Ashley Madison continues to operate and even thrive by some accounts. According to a 2018 report from auditors Ernst & Young, there were 472,752 new Ashley Madison accounts registered monthly that year. A report published a year later said new registrations for 2018 totaled 5.3 million and on average there were 442,449 new Ashley Madison accounts registered each month. In this post, Ashley Madison claims to have 60 million members. The site’s tagline continues to be “Life is short. Have an affair.”

remember when this happened

I could've swore this was like 2008, not six short years ago.

so many lives ruined

i was right

.
.
.
.
right?

probably not

*wonder years narration voice*

ok someone do the final episode epilogue for the celebrity "exposure" crew who was ruined by this

its really amazing that nothing came out of this

One Douche Life To Live

oh wait one thing did my older brother (who is not married) was on it lol

As the World Douches