How will US handle fallout from the most serious cyber-attack it's ever experienced?

[Aimless]

Apart from making a movie about it in a few years I mean

http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/31/wh...security-risk/

EXCERPT:

If we assume that half of the 50 million compromised Avid Life records are U.S. records, which seems a conservative assumption, and that the people who used the sites are representative of the general population, then the numbers below represent roughly the number of Americans in each of those categories.

1,250 Federal and State elected officials
2,500 FBI employees
2,500 NSA employees
2,175 full time nuclear power plant workers
3,500 TSA employees
25,000 DHS employees
35,000 local elected officials
60,000 people with top secret security clearance

These are people whose marital indiscretions, nude pictures, and sexual proclivities are now in the hands of anonymous hackers calling themselves the Impact Group. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, then you have clearly never seen a good spy movie.

[Note: I haven’t taken into account here the percentage of accounts that might be duplicates (one person might have accounts on more than one of Avid’s services). The numbers are intended simply to illustrate how big the potential problem is, not to be taken as concrete.]

[Being]

Apart from making a movie about it in a few years I mean

http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/31/wh...security-risk/

EXCERPT:

The US will handle it fine...the idiots who thought signing up with a cheating website wouldn't be problematic well...they'll probably get what they deserve.

[Aimless]

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015...an-we-thought/

For what it's worth, more than 15,000 of the e-mail addresses are hosted by US government and military servers using the .gov and .mil top-level domains.

Sigh. Some people.

[Ominous Gamer]

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015...an-we-thought/



Sigh. Some people.

http://gawker.com/family-values-acti...-ma-1725132091

[Loki]

I wonder how many Christian fundie careers this leak will destroy.

[Lewkowski]

http://gawker.com/family-values-acti...-ma-1725132091

Awesome - while I'm not one to praise cyber attacks of any kind (except against terrorists and state sponsors of terror) I'm quite glad the trash is getting take out here. Immoral people preaching morality are far more dangerous than anything outwardly immoral people could ever do. Molesting cheating scum should have his name dragged through the mud.

[Being]

I think it's a first...me, Loki, Aimless, and Lewk agreeing on something.

[RandBlade]

There's always something a bit Animal Farm about American right wing fundies preaching family values while serially being cheats etc

And what kind of idiot signs up for a site like that using a work email address? Or even your personal email address? I'd never sign up for that site but if I did it's dead easy to create a disposable email address that is only linked to that.

[ImAnOgre]

I have known some really bad people who post accounts on those websites just to get other's in trouble.

Hell, my ex-wife, whom i can't stand BTW, started signing up people she felt wronger her to Nambla.

And that's not the North American Marlon Brando Lookalike Association either.

I'd bet a bunch of those credentials are fake.

[Flixy]

Well, if they paid almost a thousand dollars with their credit card...

[GGT]

IMO, it's pathetic that cyber security is only taken seriously after a web site like Ashley Madison has been hacked.

[Aimless]

IMO, it's pathetic that cyber security is only taken seriously after a web site like Ashley Madison has been hacked.

What on earth gave you that impression?

[Khendraja'aro]

I have known some really bad people who post accounts on those websites just to get other's in trouble.

Hell, my ex-wife, whom i can't stand BTW, started signing up people she felt wronger her to Nambla.

And that's not the North American Marlon Brando Lookalike Association either.

I'd bet a bunch of those credentials are fake.

Indeed. According to articles, the e-mail adresses count for nothing because they didn't verify them. I mean, you can also find barack.obama@whitehouse.gov on that list.

[GGT]

This is souring pretty fast. People aren't just suing Ashley Madison for breach of contract (failure to protect their privacy), but for liability in other areas, including divorces....and suicides.

People like Snowden or Assange, who used "hacking" to expose internet vulnerabilities, probably aren't the real enemy. Maybe the worst violators are hiding in plain sight?

[RandBlade]

I hope anyone who sues Ashley Madison for divorce etc gets laughed out of court. Nobody is responsible for a divorce other than the parties actually concerned.

Khen a female SNP MP was publicised as being on the list but it was quite clearly fake if you scratched beneath the surface: http://order-order.com/2015/08/21/tr...RVSYCM4_40jWZA

[GGT]

I hope anyone who sues Ashley Madison for divorce etc gets laughed out of court. Nobody is responsible for a divorce other than the parties actually concerned.

I think the legal injuries are related to breach of contract, where privacy is something they paid for but didn't get.

[Lewkowski]

This is souring pretty fast. People aren't just suing Ashley Madison for breach of contract (failure to protect their privacy), but for liability in other areas, including divorces....and suicides.

People like Snowden or Assange, who used "hacking" to expose internet vulnerabilities, probably aren't the real enemy. Maybe the worst violators are hiding in plain sight?

Suicides really? That's always the person's choice and while people can influence the decision the sole responsibility is that in the individual who took their own life. Stupid really.

[ImAnOgre]

I hope anyone who sues Ashley Madison for divorce etc gets laughed out of court. Nobody is responsible for a divorce other than the parties actually concerned.

Khen a female SNP MP was publicised as being on the list but it was quite clearly fake if you scratched beneath the surface: http://order-order.com/2015/08/21/tr...RVSYCM4_40jWZA

Unless the reason for Divorce is because Ashley Madison allowed people to sign up without verifying ANYTHING, and the people who were signed up did NOT actually sign up. Looking at the data, they didn't even do a cursory email to people who signed up saying.... do you own this account. There are items that are common practice for fraud and compliance, and it appears AM did none of this.

Story:
http://kfor.com/2015/08/27/report-mo...nts-were-fake/

It appears that AM knew there were fake accounts all along, and did NOTHING to curb this, because it increased page view, and activity on the site, thereby giving the site a sense of legitimacy.

Turning a blind eye to this, to me makes them culpable.

[ImAnOgre]

HOLY MOTHER OF (WHATEVER FIGURE HEAD YOU USE FOR YOUR RELIGION)

AM not only knew there were fake accounts, they made some on their own:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/as...-10466900.html

Those MFers should be in jail.

[Ominous Gamer]

It warns you in the EULA that there are fake accounts. That gizmodo analysis of just how much of a sausage fest Ashley Madison was is hilarious.


At worst, these guys may be in hot water for charging to delete accounts but not fully doing so. But even that would depend on the wording.

[RandBlade]

Unless the reason for Divorce is because Ashley Madison allowed people to sign up without verifying ANYTHING, and the people who were signed up did NOT actually sign up. Looking at the data, they didn't even do a cursory email to people who signed up saying.... do you own this account. There are items that are common practice for fraud and compliance, and it appears AM did none of this.

Story:
http://kfor.com/2015/08/27/report-mo...nts-were-fake/

It appears that AM knew there were fake accounts all along, and did NOTHING to curb this, because it increased page view, and activity on the site, thereby giving the site a sense of legitimacy.

Turning a blind eye to this, to me makes them culpable.

If you trust your partner so little you're willing to get divorced because of a fake account on a website then again I don't think AM are responsible for the divorce.

They may be responsible for fraud, misrepresentation etc (because of your next post) but they can't be responsible IMO for divorce.

EDIT: LOL at that being covered by the EULA. Bury it in a body of text nobody reads.

[Flixy]

IANAL but just because you put something in a EULA doesn't make it legal per se (same for any contract I think). And burying something in terms and conditions or small print doesn't automatically negate false advertising either.

[LittleFuzzy]

They can be responsible for the damages accrued during a divorce though. Over in England you don't have straight no-fault (though you do allow divorce after several years of separation), but you take some of the sting out of that by not allowing any penalties for adultery. We do allow no-faults, but also allow the parties behavior to carry weight with things like division of assets or required post-divorce support.

[GGT]

There are some 30 million accounts all over the world....including places where adultery is punishable with prison time, or even death!

Leave it to Lewk to downplay suicides, as if that's just another "stupid choice" people make (like having an affair?), while ignoring that "honor killings" happen in other countries/cultures.

[Lewkowski]

There are some 30 million accounts all over the world....including places where adultery is punishable with prison time, or even death!

Leave it to Lewk to downplay suicides, as if that's just another "stupid choice" people make (like having an affair?), while ignoring that "honor killings" happen in other countries/cultures.

What?

[Loki]

There are some 30 million accounts all over the world....including places where adultery is punishable with prison time, or even death!

Leave it to Lewk to downplay suicides, as if that's just another "stupid choice" people make (like having an affair?), while ignoring that "honor killings" happen in other countries/cultures.

Men don't get executed for adultery in those cultures; only women do. I'm sure there are a handful of exceptions, but it's highly unlikely that some Middle Eastern male who signed up to this would be punished with more than a few lashes (if at all). And I find it hard to believe that women from that part of the world would sign up.

[GGT]

The men who signed up at Ashley Madison were looking for women....in "their part of the world". You may find it hard to believe, but women from all corners of the globe "signed up", too.

The web site was taking payments for privacy promises they couldn't deliver.

[Loki]

I'd really like to see how a woman can carry out an affair in the Middle East without her father or husband finding out.

[GGT]

I'd really like to see how a woman can carry out an affair in the Middle East without her father or husband finding out.

Your verbiage is disturbing.

[Aimless]

Hey guys let's not forget the gay guys