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Ashley Madison CEO Steps Down, Reporter Finds Clues To Hacker's Identity
Dave Knott writes: Following the recent hacks on the infidelity website Ashley Madison, Noel Biderman has stepped down as CEO of both AshleyMadison.com and its parent company. Avid Life Media Inc., the company that owns the site and many others, announced Biderman's move in a short press release on Friday: "Noel Biderman, in mutual agreement with the company, is stepping down as chief executive officer of Avid Life Media Inc. (ALM) and is no longer with the company. Until the appointment of a new CEO, the company will be led by the existing senior management team." Before the data hack, the company was planning an IPO in London that would have taken in as much as $200 million from investors. According to regulatory filings, the company had $115 million in revenue last year, more than four times the amount it obtained in 2009.
Meanwhile, in related news, Brian Krebs (the reporter who first uncovered the hack) says he has uncovered clues to the possible identity of the hacker. Krebs says he noticed the Twitter account operated by a known hacker recently posted a link to Ashley Madison's stolen proprietary source code before it was made public. Intrigued by the poster's apparent access, he examined the account's posting history and noticed a predilection for the music of Australian hard rock band AC/DC. This jibes with the behavior of the hacker(s), who had displayed threatening messages on the computers of Ashley Madison employees, accompanied by AC/DC song Thunderstruck. In a series of tweets, the owner of the account, one Thadeus Zu, appears to deny that he was behind the hack, and indeed makes several suggestions that the account itself isn't even run by one person, but is instead an amalgam of like-minded digital vigilantes. The NY Times also reports that people whose details were contained in the leak are beginning to face threats of blackmail.
Meanwhile, in related news, Brian Krebs (the reporter who first uncovered the hack) says he has uncovered clues to the possible identity of the hacker. Krebs says he noticed the Twitter account operated by a known hacker recently posted a link to Ashley Madison's stolen proprietary source code before it was made public. Intrigued by the poster's apparent access, he examined the account's posting history and noticed a predilection for the music of Australian hard rock band AC/DC. This jibes with the behavior of the hacker(s), who had displayed threatening messages on the computers of Ashley Madison employees, accompanied by AC/DC song Thunderstruck. In a series of tweets, the owner of the account, one Thadeus Zu, appears to deny that he was behind the hack, and indeed makes several suggestions that the account itself isn't even run by one person, but is instead an amalgam of like-minded digital vigilantes. The NY Times also reports that people whose details were contained in the leak are beginning to face threats of blackmail.
Than all of them, probably.
The guy who ran a website for cheaters was always open about that fact.
I'm less convinced in the transparency or honesty of pretty much any political candidate.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
He ran a fraud:
Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Database Ever Used the Site
...
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.
...
... a member had last replied to a message from another person on Ashley Madison. 5.9 million men had done it, and only 9700 women had.
...
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.
...
Protip: The CEO stepping down after a public embarrassment has never been anything other than a publicity stunt to save face. It does not represent remorse or an intent to change policy. At most, it means "we want someone who will do continue to do the same things we've always done but, somehow, will magically make these revelations stop happening".
I would be shocked if Biderman wasn't receiving a nice golden parachute along with it. Or at least silver.
When you only include people who had access to the source code before it was publicly available, the pool becomes quite small.
The guy who ran a website for cheaters was always open about that fact.
On the other hand he was less than honest about how many actual women were on the site. (Fewer than 15,000 vs millions of clearly fake profiles) and also less than honest about what a "paid delete" actually paid for.
So men paid money to join a site to cheat with women that didn't exist, were then charged extra to send messages to women's accounts that were fake, and then when they paid even more to delete their accounts, well that didn't happen either.
If that's your idea of honesty and transparency, I don't know what you think counts as "dishonest".
Like I said, I doubt we'll ever know the exact number, but the truth is probably somewhere between 12,000 and 2.1 million.
http://gizmodo.com/almost-none...
The truth is probably somewhere below 15,000 'real' members, and probably much lower, like 1000. After all, someone joining and responding to a couple messages and then never coming back is being counted as an "active" member here. I'm willing to bet of the 10k women who had replied to "at least 1 message", a majority of even them were gone within a week or two. And that 15,000 includes people who were active in the past but might not have used the site in 2 years... how many active women were there in the last 3 months? I think one could credibly suggest it was in the hundreds.
Only 1,492 women had ever checked their inbox. (20 million men had)
Only 9,700 women had ever replied to a single message. (Note the article explains how this number can be higher than the above number.) (6 million men did)
Only 2,400 women had engaged in chat. (11 million men did)
The higher portion of paid deletes for women also lines up with the large number of female accounts that basically existed for one day and never came back; a good number of those may have opted for the paid delete. Especially if they were only checking to see if their husband had an account.
The proportions don't line up 100% (although it makes sense that more men checked their inboxes; they weren't getting all the messages on login that women did. So women would answer their messages directly from login, and rarely check their inbox, while men would futilely check their inbox looking for messages that would never come.)
Frankly, as I said, based on what I see there. I don't think the site even credibly had even 1000 active women on it at any one time.