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Hackers Publish Cheating Site's Stolen Data

pdclarry notes that many news outlets are reporting that 9.7 GB of data stolen from cheating website AshleyMadison.com has been published online. "The dump contains files with titles including 'aminno_member_dump.gz,' 'aminno_member_email.dump.gz,' 'CreditCardTransactions7z,' and 'member_details.dump.gz,' an indication that the download could contain highly personal details." Brian Krebs questioned the way this has been reported without confirmation, but added that he's been contacted by several people who found their own accurate details within the data dump. Many of the reports note this detail: "Assuming the download turns out to be authentic, people should remember that it was possible for anyone to create an account using the name and e-mail address of other individuals."

22 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. ... using the name and e-mail address of other ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Usually all sites will send a confirmation email and only enable the account if a confirmation link or code from that email is used.

    So i guess it's a bit hard to "create an account using the ... e-mail address of other individuals"

  2. Yeah, right. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Assuming the download turns out to be authentic, people should remember that it was possible for anyone to create an account using the name and e-mail address of other individuals.

    ...And supplying other people's credit card details as well, no doubt.

    FWIW, I believe that people's sex lives are their own business, married or not. But I find it difficult to drum up any sympathy for marrieds who are foolish enough to go looking for something on the side via a big flashy commercial website dedicated to that purpose.

    Internet privacy was over at least a decade ago. There's been plenty of time for you to figure this out.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    1. Re:Yeah, right. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've always assumed that GMail isn't really private, either.

      For most of the last 25 years, I've followed a little rule I learned in my radio days: "Don't say it on the air if you don't want to read about it in the paper." It's yet to be proven wrong.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    2. Re:Yeah, right. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I see marriage as a partnership between two people. Each gets a lot out of the marriage - stability, a family, a home, security, companionship etc. So refraining from cheating on your partner is just one of the sacrifices you have to make in exchange for that. Sure, you can agree not to be exclusive with each other and maintain the marriage, but going behind your partner's back when you know it will hurt them is not right.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Yeah, right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      the heartbreak from cheating is nothing compared to the enduring pain from the death of a loved one

      This is one of those generalisations that betrays a close to zero understanding of human emotion. Cheating and unexpected death are both often experienced in similar ways as losses: you had a strong bond with someone that was very important to you, and now suddenly you don't. The loved one has gone, and it's not relevant whether they've gone to the guy/gal the next town over, or six feet under.

      the powerful have had mistresses or consorts or even kept harems

      They've also waged brutal offensive wars and raped and pillaged. "The powerful" tends to be a fairly vicious standard to look up to - fortunately, most people don't.

      there have been entire societies that practiced polygamy at all levels

      Polygamy is not about cheating. There is nothing dishonest in everyone agreeing to a particular arrangement, whatever it is. In confounding two separate arguments, you're making polygamy look bad, even when you seem to want to make it look good.

      If you think you can truly be your partner's everything, the only one they'll ever need to provide everything they desire, then (statistically speaking) you're delusional.

      This is a ridiculous strawman, and you know it.

      Cheating may feel inhumane, but it is very, very human.

      This statement is vacuous. What does "human" mean here - that it's something humans can and sometimes do do? Then murder is "very, very human". It's certainly not inevitable for even a small minority to cheat. You don't want to be faithful to Bob? Go tell Bob!

    4. Re:Yeah, right. by readin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh, please. Cheating is bad, but "one of the cruelest and most inhumane things one person can do to another" is at risk of breaking my hyperboleometer.

      Let's see you build your life around a commitment and the other person breaks it. From the biological standpoint of a man you forgo all other chances to reproduce on the belief that you're partner will have your child and then you spend a huge portion of your life caring for that child and earning money to support that child. Then you find out it's not your child. You've been tricked into spending your whole existence serving the interests of another man. If you believe the theory of evolution you understand that you have been murdered for eternity.

      There are reasons men get jealous and why in most successful societies female infidelity incurs severe punishments, and why rape should also incur severe penalties.

      --
      I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
  3. As a wise man once said by Distan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Information wants to be free".

    The idea that AshleyMadison (or any other entity) would keep registration information private forever was laughable. My rule of thumb is that if I don't want what I do to be published all over the internet, then don't do it.

    1. Re:As a wise man once said by tezbobobo · · Score: 5, Funny

      You're right. Data hates when you give it anthropomorphic qualities. Also, when you take things too literally.

    2. Re:As a wise man once said by TsuruchiBrian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Information wants to be free" isn't meant to be taken literally. It's a metaphor for the fact that it is very hard to restrict access to information once a large enough number of people have already have access to it. It only takes one person to leak it, and the odds that no one will leak it goes to nearly 0 pretty quickly.

      So yeah, don't create or share any information with anyone unnecessarily if you don't want it leaked. The morality of violating someone's privacy is irrelevant, to the reality of the difficulty of restricting access to information.

      And yes, if I actually cared about keeping my medical information secret more than I cared about getting medical treatment, then I wouldn't get the medical treatment. Luckily, no one gives a shit about my medical records. Medical record are like genitals, everyone's got them. The same goes with financial records.

  4. That's Funny... by Greyfox · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just felt a strange disturbance in The Force, as if a million divorce lawyers suddenly yelled out "CHA-CHING!" and then... yelled out "CHA-CHING!" again!

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    1. Re:That's Funny... by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Funny

      I just felt a strange disturbance in Di Vorce, as if a million divorce lawyers suddenly yelled out "CHA-CHING!" and then... yelled out "CHA-CHING!" again!

      FTFY

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  5. Re: ... using the name and e-mail address of other by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Except AM specifically did NOT so as to help avoid leaving a trail.

    One of my friends is on this list because I created his account for him as a prank.

  6. Re: ... using the name and e-mail address of other by x0ra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not a prank, it's identity theft, either a felony or a misdemeanor.

  7. Re:More social decay. by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why does lifelong monogamy has to be the moral norm ?

    Who said it does? Nobody says it has to be your norm. You don't have to get married, lots of people don't. You certainly don't have to stay married, again lost of people don't.

    There is nothing particularly immoral about having multiple partners over your life. The immorality is the deception and betrayal of trust. If your going to bang strangers from the internet fine... tell your partner(s) that's what your going to be doing. If they're cool with that great. If they're not, you can leave each other and find a partner(s) that will accept it.

    But sneaking around behind their back(s), lying to them, and violating their trust? What's your "moral" argument for doing that?

  8. Re: ... using the name and e-mail address of other by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Funny

    well the second part of the prank was obviously to hack and publish the user database.

    a pretty elaborate prank I must say, I salute!

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  9. Re:Give me the time to download.... by x0ra · · Score: 5, Informative

    the database is legit, my phony ID is it.

  10. Re:More social decay. by cbhacking · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder how long it's going to take before polyamory and related "ethical non-monogamy" concepts become as accepted in society as, say, anal hetero sex or lesbian sex (neither of which are universally accepted, but at least they aren't seen as completely bizarre anymore). The ideas aren't new; swinging/wife-swapping (at least in semi-secret) goes back at least a hundred years, there have been multi-partner communes since decades ago, Heinlein wrote of multi-partner families as a social norm in a number of his books... but it's only relatively recently that social norms have come to accept the concept, and it's still viewed askance by many even in those parts of the west coast where it's most common.

    --
    There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  11. Re:More social decay. by The+Rizz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    However, lies to strangers and casual acquaintances are a different thing than lies to someone who is supposed to be able to have implicit trust in you. I'm not talking about small lies like "I'm on my way right now" when you'd totally forgotten something, but the big important ones like "I'm swear not fucking the babysitter." It's a sheer betrayal on a personal level - it causes emotional pain and suffering, and is of the type that such relationships almost never recover from.

  12. Re:More social decay. by Gavagai80 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The average American of course commits 0 felonies a day, but by repeating that lie you're at least providing evidence for the lying part.

    --
    This space intentionally left blank
  13. Re:More social decay. by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    I find a weird assumption of many of the polyamory folk that most everyone would be polyamorous if not for "societal mores keeping them repressed". Don't get me wrong, I think greater acceptance of polyamorous folk is a good thing, and there probably are some polyamorous people in the closet for some reason or another. But it's simply not true that most people would be polyamorous if "given the chance", as a lot of polyamorous people think, any more than most people would be gay if "given the chance" or whatnot.

    Look at human societies throughout history, and not just Judeo-Christian ones. How common is polyamory? I'm not talking about cheating, or leaving one's spouse and finding another, or anything of that nature - I'm talking a group of people who live together, love each other, and all F* together as desired. The reality is, it's been extremely rare. Many societies have normalized "playing the field" - having sex for fun without feelings getting involved - while others frown upon it. But that's not the same as polyamory, which implies a love and bonding relationship between multiple partners.

    When feelings get involved, poly situations can get very complicated. "Why is he favoring her???" "Is she no longer interested in me???" "He keeps wanting to spend time with this new girl but I can't stand her". Etc. Don't get me wrong, some people do pull it off - and kudos to them. But let's not pretend that it's for everyone, or even the majority.

    I live in a country (Iceland) where there's very little judgement about people for having sex or who they sleep with, in comparison to the US. It's pretty much just expected that if you're an adult, you're F*ing someone, at least one person, possibly multiple, of whatever gender. When our previous prime minister's party was elected, the fact that she's a lesbian was such a big deal that when a call went out for rat's asses, nobody gave one. When she was in office, it only came up in the context of "X country is causing inconveniences for Iceland because they don't like the fact that our PM is gay". Same-sex marriage passed parliament without a single vote in opposition. Reykjavík Pride is one of our country's largest annual festivals, with as much as a third of the population attending. The concept of "dating" without having sex is pretty much an alien concept here. When a couple has been together for a long time, their families generally don't start asking "when are you two going to get married", rather "when are you two going to have kids?" The typical order is meet->sex->get to know each other while having more sex->start dating->kids->optional marriage if you feel like it.

    But people from overseas hear this and they misinterpret it, applying their own stereotypes about "how the world would be without holdups about sex" to Iceland. So for example, we get tourists (mainly guys) who come over here and think that this means that any girl he starts talking to in a bar is going to want to F* him. It's really annoying - they don't get the connection that "not being ashamed of sex" doesn't mean "interested in F*ing anyone who says hi". Likewise, polyamory isn't particularly common here. People sleep around aplenty, but if they start getting feelings toward someone, it usually stays toward one person. If things change, the result is usually the same sort of "cheating and/or breakup" situation that you're used to in the states. And people cheating on their spouse - aka, deceiving them - is still very frowned upon, because deceiving a person is a scummy activity no matter what country you're from. There's no shame in divorce here, but cheaters are still rightly seen as scumbags.

    Regardless of where you're from: Either be open and honest with the person you're with, or accept that you're a total douchebag.

    --
    "99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
  14. Re:... using the name and e-mail address of other by McGruber · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Arstechnica reports:

    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.

    I wonder how many federal employees will be losing security clearances as a result of this?

  15. Re:... using the name and e-mail address of other by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 4, Funny

    my favourite reaction to this incident is:
    "2 years of paying $19 a month... Now I'm finally getting f**ked"