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The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

• tptacek 11y ago
  The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had trouble believing it was a real thing before the breach apparently proved otherwise --- there is nothing ethically acceptable about publicly gawking at and sharing data from the leak. The people doing this aren't victimizing Avid Life Media; they're re-victimizing the real victims of what is clearly an actual crime. If it's O.K. to hack into someone else's server and mass-out people for having profiles on a dating site because you suspect most of them might be "guilty" of the crime of "marital infidelity" --- and come on, 98% of the people talking about this on Twitter barely recognize that as ethically problematic in the first place --- how do you make a case that it's unethical for dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs? Pungent hypocrisy isn't even the worst of it. By amplifying the drama and pageantry of the leak, people are altering the incentives attackers have to pull stunts like this. They're helping normalize a crime that most of us think really should be illegal. The people who created this dump are very unlikely to get caught for it. So what's really going to happen is that the next dumb kid who gets captured as the one unlucky DDoS "protester" in a group of 40 on an IRC channel, that kid is going to deal with a prosecutors who is further radicalized by events like this. It's just a toxic, evil, repulsive scene. "Avid Life Media" is gross and creepy, and apparently totally incompetent. I'm not saying everyone has to take a vow of silence about their getting completely owned up. I'm just saying you cross a line when you start circulating people's private data.
  • gus_massa 11y ago
    Somewhat related: In the university I work the students must fill an anonymous poll about the teachers at the end of the course. It has a part where they can choose a number from 1 to 9 in each question and an open comment anonymous part. A month later the results of the polls are published in a web page. The day they are published is very expected. Most of the teachers (T.A., professors, ...) just ignore the number part. They go straight to anonymous comments part. The worse comments are filtered, some comments are interesting but many of them are just a good source for gossip. The takeaway is that people like to gossip.
  • dsacco 11y ago
    This is a great comment, Thomas. I had an argument with my girlfriend about this. No matter what reasoning I used, no matter what I said, she could not agree that it was wrong that Ashley Madison (A.M.) was hacked. Her position was that marital infidelity is such a pubishable offense that the participants on A.M. deserve to be publicly outed. In her view, it was not even up for debate. She felt so powerfully about infidelity that she didn't care. My girlfriend is not a luddite, but she's also not an engineer. She isn't a programmer, doesn't work in tech, and is not particularly invested in ethical conversations about privacy. When I told her that hacking and outing people on a website because they do something you disagree with is playing God, she didn't seem to be phased at all. It was worth it. That this line of thinking could be used for things she did not agree with was not something I could convince her of. She simply values, in a somewhat totalitarian way, the justice inflicted on these people beyond her own right to privacy (or theirs). My point here is that you can't convince someone this is unethical behavior if they are emotionally invested in it. I think it's disgusting that this is making the rounds on Twitter. But I don't think you could ever convince people they are being hypocritical. They simply enjoy having something to dislike, especially if it fits in their ideological conception of the world. I think this is a strong parallel to the privacy violations with regards to the NSA. You can't convince people that it's wrong if they have elevated their own ethical crusade beyond their right to something such as privacy. Sorry to hijack this comment with NSA.
    • tptacek 11y ago
      It's like, you know who has a stronger opinion about wrongdoing than people who dislike infidelity? The people who picket abortion clinics. Also: there's a neat parallel to the NSA here, in that a substantial portion of the users registered for A.M. probably haven't been unfaithful, and are getting "dragnetted" up with the people who have, because who's going to take the time to sort that out?
      • daemin 11y ago
        Was there ever any requirement that one be in a relationship to join the site? I'm sure more than a few would have joined, while pretending to be in one, and subsequently have started a relationship.
  • A_COMPUTER 11y ago
    This is pretty close to the same as Donald Sterling's opinion on black people, and outed gay Republicans who voted against gay equality. Even if the outing was unethical, you can't un-pull the trigger on this being public knowledge, and people become responsible for their own shitty behavior that previously was concealed. Sucks to be them. And marital infidelity is unethical even if it isn't illegal. It's pretty FUCKING SHITTY to lie to your SO, sometimes for YEARS, exposing them to disease and finally ridicule and humiliation, and their own right to make informed choices about their precious time and trust they invest in a person. It is selfish and rotten and deprives the other person of agency. edit: on this account I have complained about Internet mob culture multiple times. I was hoping that people would recognize that I was pointing out the hypocrisy of people on this who don't care when it happens to people who do things they personally hate, but I was way too subtle. Resharing this data is a shitty thing to do, but it will happen again and who decides at that point that it's still shitty entirely depends on who is being exposed.
    • aaronbrethorst 11y ago
      It is only the same if each and every AM user has taken a vocal stand against having an affair. Otherwise it is nothing like Sterling or every gay Republican legislator or preacher who has ever been forcibly dragged out of the closet. I'm disappointed HN has a blanket ban against Gawker links, as the Geithner story there from a few weeks ago has some very important lessons for this story.
      • humanrebar 11y ago
        > It is only the same if each and every AM user has taken a vocal stand against having an affair. In most marriage ceremonies, the couple stands in public (at least in front of the people who care) and makes a series of vows. If that's not a vocal stand, I don't know what is.
    • tremon 11y ago
      > And marital infidelity is unethical even if it isn't illegal So, even ignoring that high horse you're on: in your not so humble opinion, are all registrants on ALM guilty of marital infidelity? That's assuming guilt by association, and flies directly in the face of your own constitution.
  • kerbs 11y ago
    Great comment. I have also noticed the really strange response from what feels like (anecdotally, I admit) EVERYONE being ecstatic that not only did this leak happen, but that Ashley Madison's users are "getting what's coming to them". The comparison to fighting against a terrorism-inspired surveillance state was great.
  • yummybear 11y ago
    Most people in here (I assume) think Snowden's leaks were ethic, though illegal. The reaction to The Fappening was likewise equal parts glee and disgust. Almost nobody would blink an eye at revealing a doxxing dump from a terrorist sympathizer or CP forum. Ethics are a subjective thing, and lines are hard to place.
    • lentil_soup 11y ago
      I think the line is on whether it's a personal/private matter and when it's not. The NSA is a government agency, so what it does is in the public interest. A guy planning to bomb something is also by definition affecting the public so exposing that is also in the public interest. This hack, the fappening and similar are completely personal and private so they are of no concern to anyone but the people involved in it.
      • TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Agree, though one could argue that what AM is doing is an explicit attempt to damage the basic building block of society, i.e. family. So this becomes somewhat a matter of public interest then.
        • dagw 11y ago
          one could argue that what AM is doing is an explicit attempt to damage the basic building block of society Sure, but one could also argue the same about per-marital sex, divorce and homosexuals.
          • TeMPOraL 11y ago
            Marriages are not just moral issues, they're also contracts between people themselves and between the couples and the government. They come with privileges and tax breaks and social status, and all of it is built upon assumption that marriages are mostly permanent. AM is explicitly attempting to attack that.
  • dgfv1 11y ago
    I'm obviously a dick because I already sent automated messages to relatives of people in the hack indicating to them that they were potentially cheated on. Personally I would want to know so I share that information.
    • harryf 11y ago
      Good thing you did it anonymously. We wouldn't want you to have to face any consequences for your actions. Let's hope you're not responsible for something like this http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/utah-dad-kills-family-father-day-murder-suicide-article-1.2267365 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/utah-dad-kills-fami...
      • dgfv1 11y ago
        I'm sorry what does that article have anything to do with anything. And if some wacko kills his family and himself how is that in any way my fault?
        • deleted 11y ago
          [deleted]
        • simoncion 11y ago
          How was harryf in any way saying that the incident in Utah was your fault? Please take the time to read comments more closely before replying. If you find yourself angry at something, draft a comment, wait a few minutes, and re-read both the draft and the comment to which you are replying before posting. :)
        • harryf 11y ago
          You took it upon yourself to interfere with other people's relationships and families. Whatever moral reasons you feel justify your anonymous intervention, when you start fucking with other people's relationships and families you have no idea of what's going to happen. A struggling young couple with a small child - the type of "hint" you provided might tip one or both parents over the edge... You have no idea. In short; IMO dick move
  • nkurz 11y ago
    "Avid Life Media" is gross and creepy, and apparently totally incompetent. People (and organizations) have competence in different areas. I was genuinely impressed (in a dark patterns way) by the deftness with which they handle new signups: http://www.useronboard.com/how-ashleymadison-onboards-new-users/ http://www.useronboard.com/how-ashleymadison-onboards-new-us...
    • jamiek88 11y ago
      87 part slide show? You must love the dark patterns to bother with that.
      • nkurz 11y ago
        I presume this is an attempt at humor rather than just a snide comment, but as a humorless engineer I'll ignore that and respond sincerely. It's a well put together presentation based on adding graphics and text blurbs on top of screen shots. You can read through the whole thing using the right arrow key in well under 5 minutes, likely under 2. I much preferred it to a video presentation, which even if viewed at 2x speed would have been much longer. And since it's based on showing screen shots, plain text isn't a good option. I have no particularly strong interest in dark patterns (and in fact have extreme distaste for them) but I found their mastery of the craft to be extraordinary, and the presentation to be well worth my time.
  • tomp 11y ago
    > how do you make a case that it's unethical for dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs? If you think leaking info about one organisation "doing bad stuff" (AM) is unethical, how can you then make the case that leaking info about NSA can be ethical? (I don't know if you do, but I certainly do.) Btw, I don't think hacking should be the crime it is today. At least not as long as the state agencies can do it. We should put more emphasis on computer security, not on persecution of Aaron Swartzes and such people.
    • lentil_soup 11y ago
      They are way different. Leaking stuff from A.M. is a personal matter. The NSA (and equivalents in other countries) is a public entity.
      • tomp 11y ago
        How about Stratfor and Hacking Team?
    • gizmo686 11y ago
      One could consider leaking info about the NSA to be ethical, however leaking leaking the NSA's database of our private email addresses to be unethical. More generally, when you leak something ethically, you should take care to redect the portions of the leak that will cause undue harm relative to their value (or, as many leaker due, give the full leak to a trustworthy third party (ie. a journalist), and trust them to redect responsibly). In this case, the hackers could have leaked AM's unethical behaviour without leaking their user's informaion.
  • taytus 11y ago
    Are "---" the new "(" ?
    • tomrod 11y ago
      For some time now, em dashes have been used for paranthetical asides. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash
  • akshatpradhan 11y ago
    >The people doing this aren't victimizing Avid Life Media; they're re-victimizing the real victims of what is clearly an actual crime. If it's O.K. to hack into someone else's server and mass-out people for having profiles on a dating site because you suspect most of them might be "guilty" of the crime of "marital infidelity" --- and come on, 98% of the people talking about this on Twitter barely recognize that as ethically problematic in the first place --- how do you make a case that it's unethical for dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs? That wasn't the intent. The true intent: "In a long manifesto posted alongside the stolen ALM data, The Impact Team said it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee." Impact Team's manifest is that AshleyMadison is fraudulent at business practices (e.g. charging people extra for profiles that were never deleted) and that's why the Impact Team is embarrassing the company. I understand this is emotionally charging but don't twist the intent around to, "The Impact Team believes the members on Ashley Madison are guilty of the crime: marital infidelity and thats why they're leaking the 10GB Database." Stick to the facts when opining, Thomas :).
    • icanhackit 11y ago
      The true intent: "In a long manifesto posted alongside the stolen ALM data, The Impact Team said it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee." So to show the people who use ALM's services that ALM lies about their policies, the users need to be exposed? Well it's an effective strategy, I'll give them that. But I can't shake the feeling there's a hidden fuck-you in there somewhere to the people they're outing. Just be honest, this is a complex issue with so many permutations it's hard to take any moral position. A lot of cheaters will be outed, a lot of innocent people may have their lives destroyed. What has been achieved?
      • akshatpradhan 11y ago
        >But I can't shake the feeling there's a hidden fuck-you in there somewhere to the people they're outing. That's not what Thomas is saying. He's literally saying that the main intent of why Impact Team released the 10GB database is because they felt users are guilty of the crime of marriage infidelity. His statement is counter to what Impact Team specifically said, "publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee."
  • briandherbert 11y ago
    One source of your frustration is that you're viewing all the individuals on Twitter as if they're a single entity that's also adamantly against profiling. "how do you make a case that it's unethical for dragnet traffic..." You're assuming they also hold other popular views you've seen on Twitter, then calling them hypocrites.
    • cinquemb 11y ago
      Some want to define terms with clear broad strokes and become frustrated when their observations don't lie clearly along those partitions. A good experimentalist would then simply change how they define things in order to have partitions that match their observations more closely, but that is not the case for most, especially if ones living depends on it (observations tend to be highly skewed). Something about infosec/def contractors arguing ethics I find quite comical, especially since governments and their contractors don't sit down with AT&T and the like and discuss the nuances surrounding the ethics of what they wanted done with customers of such over crips and tea (at best it was probably limited to lawyer speak with the providers in some secret court with secret rules),and then discuss how most of the work would be outsourced to private companies/individuals to "protect information" (information collected from providers who collected it from customers) from the "outsiders" (customers of such providers).
  • aaron695 11y ago
    > and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had trouble believing it was a real thing Reddit AMA - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3dy732/i_worked_at_ashley_madison_from_20082013_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3dy732/i_worked_at_as... "We had one guy I'll always remember. His wife was in an accident and stuck in a wheelchair, unable to do anything. She forced him to join the site and encouraged him to find a woman he could have sex with. He ended up finding partners that would last a couple years at a time and it worked very well for them. " It's great that you're calling people out. But I'd just stick with people deserve to have private lives, whether you agree or disagree on how they spend it.
    • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      Yet this doesn't apply when people are doing illegal things in their private lives. Given the distinction between immoral and illegal is often an unfairly weighted popularity contest, it is not a justifying distinction.
    • inversionOf 11y ago
      That whole AMA is absurd, and conveniently appeared right after the hack was first announced, and is surprisingly apologetic for a former employee. "My co-workers were a bunch of mad geniuses" "one of the best companies I've ever worked for" "my gut reaction was "Great, the bitter wives brigade has done it again."" Also, they had to retain your information for law enforcement, unless you paid $19 when they would do a super duper all layers deep wipe (apparently law enforcement no longer matters if you have $19?). They claim be be a senior employee in management, but apparently also talked with every wife calling to find out about their husband. It's an absurd AMA, and honestly could only possibly fool the gullible. And FWIW, it makes no sense for someone in the situation described to use a service like Ashley-Madison. Not only is it overwhlemingly males, the few females are generally pursuing the sites dogma of having an affair -- is the healthiest way to fulfill that relationship to engage in someone else's domestic issues? It's like joining an "Al Queda Bombmakers" site because you want to make some cherry poppers for the cub scout glee -- the story isn't rational. That seems like an absurd story to cast a sympathetic shadow on the site in the wake of a hack.
  • inversionOf 11y ago
    While I have generally approached this in an analytical fashion (e.g. this has happened, the data can no longer be stopped, and here are the inevitable outcomes), your outrage is a bit over the top, and I would say over-reaching for a moral high ground. Further you seem to engage in the same sort of extrapolation that has someone declaring being shushed in a movie theater to a slippery slope violation of their first amendment rights. Comparing the hacking of a infidelity hook up site with government mass monitoring is dubious. Ashley Madison is not a dating site. It was always, from day one, a site specifically and only for infidelity (earning it millions worth of free advertising via notoriety). The entire rise of that web property came on the backs of the notion that the site wasn't for open marriages or more casual/relaxed notions about sex -- activities that many people engage in with little risk or concern -- but for people who wanted higher risk engagements, whether outside of their own relationship promises, or with parties acting outside of their own relationship promises. because you suspect most of them might be "guilty" of the crime of "marital infidelity" Scare quotes aside, moral compasses are personal and vary between us. And the reality is that there are millions of relationships where there is infidelity, often with both parties knowing about it, but more often with one or more party in the dark. It's a risky venture and any of countless things can out one's activities, which in this case is a data dump, making people a victim, truly, of their own actions. It's not hard to imagine why many people may have "glee" about this, as it's somewhat more difficult to find the innocent parties in the churn. Though I will note that you are being very consistent (I would say to an overly rigorous extent). To address some of the other comments, the parent poster is one of the few people on here who actually very strongly disapproves of what Snowden did (if I recall correctly), so there is no inconsistency. The NSA was a victim, the argument went, of Mr. Snowden's crime.
  • robgibbons 11y ago
    You, sir, are moralizing just as much as anyone else. This situation is not ethically clean-cut, despite how badly you want it to be. The website's existence itself is -- at the very best -- ethically and morally questionable. The hack, while technically illegal, is arguably a morally righteous act. You can't say that there is nothing ethically acceptable about sharing this data, when its very existence is ethically a gray area. Whether their actions are legal or not, some people seriously deserve to get punched in the face. That's what is happening right now in digital form to ALM.
    • RodericDay 11y ago
      It's honestly pretty bizarre to have a giant moralizing post about how people should not moralize. I'm glad at least some people pick up on the hypocritical irony.
      • inversionOf 11y ago
        tptacek is like some sort of HN version of famous (note that his post was so important that his friend dang moved it from a completely different thread from many hours earlier), and I swear that the vast majority of his posts would wallow in light grays if his name wasn't attached.
    • vasilipupkin 11y ago
      "The website's existence itself is -- at the very best -- ethically and morally questionable". I vehemently disagree with this statement. Why is it morally and ethically questionable to facilitate private individuals finding sexual partners? Perhaps it's questionable according to your moral code, but society is not run on your personal moral code, thankfully
      • robgibbons 11y ago
        Luckily, most of the entire human race agrees with me. Maybe you don't think it's inherently unethical to cheat on your partner. But it is certainly an act of questionable morality. In fact, it is literally illegal in many states: "Adultery isn't just a crime in the eyes of your spouse. In 21 states, cheating in a marriage is against the law, punishable by a fine or even jail time." You, and all of the other moral relativists can tell me I'm an extremist, or a purist, but basically I just believe in justice. You cheat, you deserve to get caught. You run a site for cheaters, you deserve to get hacked.
  • peejaybee 11y ago
    Yes. I've heard this compared to the recent "Fappening" where celebrities' private photos were stolen. I'd have a hard time justifying the AM leaks without justifying the leaks of the stolen photos.
  • gegtik 11y ago
    Interesting that your moral absolutism is correct whereas theirs is false
  • wtbob 11y ago
    I really, really hope that our society's not so far gone that 98% of folks on Twitter think that marital infidelity is unproblematic. You're probably correct in your implication that folks are not posting and tweeting with glee because they care about infidelity, but because they want to humiliate and vilify.
  • panzagl 11y ago
    From watching friends deal with divorce, adultery isn't even illegal/prosecuted/considered in distribution of assets, at least in practice. At best this is a mass-outing of people who suck at monogamy.
    • FilterSweep 11y ago
      I'd argue they suck at *-gamy to be tongue-and-cheek, considering 90%-95% of the users were all male to begin with.
  • mikeash 11y ago
    "and come on, 98% of the people talking about this on Twitter barely recognize that [marital infidelity] as ethically problematic in the first place" What makes you say that? In my experience it is extremely rare to find anybody who thinks cheating on a partner is ethical, and I see no reason to think this particular group is any different. This is one of those things that most people feel very strongly about, and almost always in the same direction. And that's exactly why the reaction is so gleeful. The people who use this site are perceived as scumbags, precisely because cheating is considered to be a grave moral (if not legal) crime. Outing them is considered justice. The idea that some of them might use the service with the consent of their partner isn't enough to break through that, nor is the idea that two wrongs don't make a right. I don't agree with the gleeful reaction, but I see no hypocrisy here.
    • DarkTree 11y ago
      I don't think that's the parent comment's main argument for hypocrisy. > how do you make a case that it's unethical for dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs? Many of these proponents of the hack will unabashedly praise this hack for making these 'cheaters' identities public, but would surely argue against the use of hacking for releasing their own private account information for any site they have an account on. The hypocrisy comes from the fact that hacking is a double-edged sword, and people are failing to see the other edge.
      • mikeash 11y ago
        I don't understand this argument that people "would surely argue against the use of hacking" in other places. Context matters a lot. For example, most people would agree that killing is bad. On the other hand, most people would agree that killing in self defense, or to save the life of an innocent, is acceptable. In the context of a hack, I imagine we'd all agree that hacking fluffy-bunnies-and-flowers.com and releasing all the subscriber information would be bad. On the other hand, I'd argue (and I think a lot of people agree) that hacking lets-help-each-other-plan-mass-murder-of-innocent-children.com and exposing its subscribers would be perfectly fine, even a good thing. There's nothing hypocritical about criticizing the former but praising the latter. The nature of the target counts. All it really comes down to here is what category you think ashleymadison.com.com is in. Some people think it's in the former, because consenting adults and whatnot. Lots of people think it's in the latter, because they think cheating is extremely wrong. If you hold that opinion, then there's nothing hypocritical about praising a hack against a site like that. We might disagree with the opinion that ashleymadison.com is a bad site, but that's a different thing.
  • caskance 11y ago
    So does that mean those of us in favor of "dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs" are allowed to be gleeful here? There is no such thing as private data. There is secret data, but that descriptor no longer applies here.
  • brightball 11y ago
    Honestly, I'm more concerned about how easy it would be for the hackers to inject virtually anybody they wanted into the middle of this data to publicly smear them. With the public in a general froth over the whole episode, dropping in a celebrity, politician, preacher, etc would be child's play. I don't like anything about that site and I have a really hard time feeling sorry for people getting "outed" by it, but you're absolutely right. Allowing the illegal when it's convenient for you is not okay, even though much of the public is totally fine with violating people's privacy as long as it fits their world view. We already saw the response when a newspaper in NY published a map of registered gun owners a few years back. With medical records digitized, what the public response be to publicly disclosing abortion data? We've already seen the general response to planned parenthood videos. Your data privacy is either important or it's not. There can't be this "I think these people deserve it so it's okay now" convenience case. But as somebody else said, when they're emotionally invested they don't care.
    • protomyth 11y ago
      > Honestly, I'm more concerned about how easy it would be for the hackers to inject virtually anybody they wanted into the middle of this data to publicly smear them. With the public in a general froth over the whole episode, dropping in a celebrity, politician, preacher, etc would be child's play. This is the new scary. I'm not even sure how you would defend yourself. Its not like the normal lies are easy to defend, now people are taking this database dump as holy writ without consideration of the source or skepticism of its contents.
    • differentView 11y ago
      >Honestly, I'm more concerned about how easy it would be for the hackers to inject virtually anybody they wanted into the middle of this data to publicly smear them. With the public in a general froth over the whole episode, dropping in a celebrity, politician, preacher, etc would be child's play. This is similar to my view on the death penalty. While most people debate over the morality (Is it right to murder a murderer? Is it right to out a cheater?), I am more concerned about the "facts" (Was a person wrongfully convicted? Is the data correct?). In the case of the Ashley Madison data dump, there are at least a few points where it could be manipulated. It could have been done to the original data dump, copies of said dump floating around (since the average person wouldn't know which one is the original), and sites that have popped up allowing searching of email addresses (since really, the average person wouldn't know how to download and search the data dump). Even if all those weren't manipulated, someone's email address could appear because someone else used it. I randomly searched for case@aol.com and obama@whitehouse.gov on one of the email search sites and both showed as hits. I can easily see someone inserting fake data just for the lulz or for ideological reasons.
  • Karunamon 11y ago
    I'm a lot more worried about the identity theft implications of the leak than the "this will destroy the relationships of cheaters" implications. The cheaters deserve to be outed. Fuck 'em, let the world know their word is worthless. And as to the question as to whether they're actually cheating or not, let's be honest here - precisely nobody signed up for a site who's advertising and stated reason for existing is explicitly about sneaking around behind your spouse's back, without the intent to be sneaking around behind your spouse's back. And comparing outing cheaters to terrorists, seriously? That said, it doesn't mean that they deserve to have their identities stolen. More acceptable would have been names and emails without all the credit card and other personally identifying info. It's just a toxic, evil, repulsive scene. You know what's toxic, evil, and repulsive? Entering into a committed relationship with one person, and rather than being an adult and breaking it off if it's not working, sneaking around behind their backs while leading them around as if you're remaining faithful. As far as I'm concerned, cheating is near the top of the list of horrible things you can do to another human being. I fully expect this sentiment to be a barely-visible shade of "disagreed with the rest of the site light grey" by the end of the day.
    • fweespeech 11y ago
      You are aware the hackers could just inject a few innocent names into the list to smear targets [e.g. politicians, people they don't like] right? You are assuming guilt when, frankly, there is no real evidence the list isn't peppered with targets selected by the hackers in addition to the people who actually used the site. It also the only way to make money off such a list if Ashley Madison didn't pay up [e.g. Give us $X and we'll add your political enemies to the list] Tptacek is correct. This list is, literally, a weapon and could be employed by an actor to attack someone [although no violence would be required]. Honestly, I'm seriously concerned anyone be naive enough to take the list at face value when its clear the hackers had a financial motive to be dishonest. [e.g. Attempting to blackmail AshleyMadison for money.]
    • tptacek 11y ago
      And the people on the site who are not cheaters, and not willing to help someone else cheat?
  • brudgers 11y ago
    In any event, the ethics of the data publication itself is orthogonal to the behavior of people on Twitter...unless we want to blame Twitter for facilitating problematic behaviors by its users. To me the publication of the data is not quite so black and white because ultimately the Ashley-Madison data was going to escape into the rest of the internet. This assumes it hadn't already been published prior to the recent event and that's an assumption because Ashley-Madison is and has been in position to monetize the data in standard ways [and perhaps rather non-standard ways] from day one. Which is a roundabout way of pointing out that Ashley-Madison is and always has been in a position to publish this data via changing its terms of service or by selling itself to a successor company and transfer the data as just another asset. The key here is that individual users don't hold license to the data, and so a successor company can do with it as they please restricted only by actual law-enforcement Uber/AirBnB style [as opposed to hiring lawyers and restricting their actions based on what's on the books]. Web-scale infidelity [even if much of it is of the weaker Jimmy Carter sort: "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."] will inevitably be followed by web-scale exposure. Sharing a secret means giving up access-control to the information...someone else can read my diary or talk to my best friend or read it off a web-server, and the likelihood of someone doing so correlates directly to their interest in doing so. Which brings me back to the ethics. There's no clear deontological case for a universal law against publishing data, and the long-term Utilitarian optimum solution is intractable. So we're left with the normal social context of those aspiring to extra-marital affairs are worse than gossips or vice-versa.
  • ForHackernews 11y ago
    > how do you make a case that it's unethical for dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs? Talk about a flawed analogy! I would argue that it's totally ethical to hack/steal/gawk at the data from a "Terrorists R Us" website that publicly advertised itself as a social network for terrorists, and took money from terrorists and terrorist wannabes to help them connect with other terrorists and swap bomb-making tips. In fact, that kind of targeted attack would be the exact opposite of "dragnet" surveillance. If we could steal and dump all the data from ISIS's central database, we should absolutely do that! Edit: And before anyone jumps in here with "terrorism isn't the same as cheating on your spouse"--of course it's not--which makes parent's analogy even more ludicrous.
  • richardlblair 11y ago
    People seem to miss the fact that the people who have signed up for this "dating" website aren't in a good place. They are missing something in their relationships, to the point where they are willing to look online for some level of fulfillment. I'm not justifying it, but I'm saying that there is a perspective that is being ignored. And then there is the fact that most people don't seem to know that AM has the same business model as OK Cupid. You don't pay until you want to message someone. So, someone on a lonely night signs up for AM, forgets, and now their name is in a database when all they did was sign up, maybe search, but never took action. Now that person could lose their relationship. Again, not defending these individuals, but offering an unpopular perspective.
  • tunesmith 11y ago
    I see a real, damaging increase of the "Callout Culture" in general. Even here on hacker news, I've seen a handful of callouts in a way that used to be much rarer on discussion sites. I'm talking about the things where someone makes a comment, someone else then researches them or their history and the replies with a comment challenging them on whatever - perhaps tangentially related, but just "out of bounds" enough to be embarrassing and silencing. More generally, it seems to be culturally acceptable these days to asymmetrically name-and-shame someone for offensive yet private and legal conduct. The thing is, it is usually difficult to defend each offender on a case-by-case basis, but it still doesn't mean it's the right thing to do to call in the anonymous hordes to attempt to ruin someone's life. This is a clear example - chalking it up to "if they didn't want to risk exposure, they shouldn't have signed up" is right up there with "if you're not doing anything illegal, then you shouldn't have a problem with being monitored/drug-tested/whatever". Maybe there's a split in our society where one demo is completely comfortable with having all their private data out there and occasionally exposed, or to feel more communally "owned", but that doesn't mean it's right to expose someone else.
• crb002 11y ago
  The list of .gov and State govt email accounts is public transparency. Someone should extract those and turn them over to Muckrock.
  • daemin 11y ago
    You'd have to be really thoughtless to use your work or official government email account on a dating site, let alone one with a shady premise such as this.
    • tomjen3 11y ago
      True, but there are plenty of idiots everywhere, including in government.
      • joaq 11y ago
        The real question is, do they require e-mail verification after signup? If they do, the list is a lot more valuable.
        • daemin 11y ago
          They do, I read somewhere that out of 35 million addresses in the system, only 24 million are verified. Still, I imagine that there would be false positives in the verified emails list (for instance someone clicked on it by accident or without reading it as they were signing up for something else, etc).
  • BashiBazouk 11y ago
    A thread above alleges that barack.obama@whitehouse.gov and tblair@labour.gov.uk were found in the data base. Do you really think those two leaders used or even signed up for AM?
  • GabrielF00 11y ago
    A lot of those were obviously fake emails though (foxmulder@fbi.gov for example)
• waroc 11y ago
  Ashley Madison Database (not parsed): http://pastebin.com/9t6DLKm3 http://pastebin.com/9t6DLKm3
  • JumpCrisscross 11y ago
    What are the repeated "111111Iwillneverdoitagain" strings?
    • joshstrange 11y ago
      I have not seen the dumps but if I had to make a guess maybe they set that to the PW when the user deletes the account? You won't be able to ever login again because I doubt there is a string that when hashed and salted comes out to that exact string.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  • inversionOf 11y ago
    I grabbed the data and found an old peer in there, and he listed both our office and his home address in profiles, which he would never have done for anything else. He also used an email address on a domain he controls that he created just for that, and accessed it (there are IP addresses) from a remote corporate location while on a trip there (I actually was on the same trip with him). This is just one record, but that data is absolutely real. And I looked up this particular person because they struck me as exactly the userbase of the site.
    • cft 11y ago
      Where is the download link please?
      • caseysoftware 11y ago
        I've seen it posted once here already. The comment was nuked. Check on Reddit's Hacking section.
        • jayess 11y ago
          It's available on torrent now.
      • gruez 11y ago
        magnet:?xt=urn:btih:40AE8A90DE40CA3AFA763C8EDB43FC1FC47D75F1
    • aidos 11y ago
      God. That's some seriously incriminating evidence. How much detail is in ther re locations? Are the up addresses logged for every visit? I'd be interested in seeing a schema to better understand the bredth of the data. Is that something others would feel comfortable about posting or is even that considered unethical on here. It's all a very murky area.
• danieltillett 11y ago
  Who know unless you had a profile there. One thing I found interesting was the suggestion from one of the comments that AM might be the ones dumping all the fake databases. If so this is a pretty clever strategy to try and hide a needle in a pile of needles.
  • smegel 11y ago
    Just as likely all the scammers and malware distributors in the world are also getting in on the act.
    • danieltillett 11y ago
      It certainly would be a good place to hide it - unlike most of these data dumps, you would be getting lots of unsophisticated people looking at them trying to workout if their name was in the dump.
• iaw 11y ago
  Krebs has since updated his post with confirmation from three independent Ashley Madison users confirming their data was in the leak. It looks like this was the real deal.
  • jpatokal 11y ago
    Interestingly, the three people say the last digits of their credit card numbers were included in the dump, while the Ashley Madison CTO says they don't keep credit card numbers, full stop.
    • inversionOf 11y ago
      Storing the final digits complies with the CC requirements, to my knowledge. I mean, every online store happily shows me my final four digits. So it could just be confusion about what they mean. Having said that, Ashley Madison has approximately zero credibility, so whatever their agents say is open to intense skepticism.
      • agopaul 11y ago
        This, you don't even need to be PCI compliant to store the last 4 digits and the expiration date. This way you can show this info to the user and email the user before the card expires (in case of recurring payments). If you work with external payment gateways sometimes you are provided with this information even if the card processing is done directly on the processor page (you only have access to limited information about the card and the transaction)
    • heimatau 11y ago
      Yeah, I noticed they said that too. I look forward to hearing more about the hack. AM says it wouldn't be through them. Makes me wonder about where the hackers got in at.
    • kzhahou 11y ago
      Whereupon we find out that a developer had indeed added CC to the database, and the CTO didn't know...? :-\
• codezero 11y ago
  Update indicates it's legit.
• dang 11y ago
  Since this is a big story it seems reasonable to have a thread about it—people are going to keep posting these anyhow. Since we have no idea which URL is the most substantive one, we'll leave this one as is. If anybody finds a link that's significantly better, we can change it. Since the consensus is now that the leak is real, we'll change the title to reflect that.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• yeukhon 11y ago
  This is my first time to learn about Ashley Madison. The business model actually disgusts me. I get the whole open relationship, but people who are actually married or in a committed relationship are using this site is just ridiculous. Either you break off with your current relationship, or stay loyal. BTW, those "secure" logo are just so useless I see them as sign of weakness rather than confidence. Anyone can place a secure logo or verified logo on their homepage and pretend.
  • ougachooga 11y ago
    I'm curious why so many are downvoting. Do you disagree that the business model is disgusting, or just think it's inappropriate to say so about a peer's startup? I'm very curious to know what HNers think about this.
    • DanBC 11y ago
      HN seems to be tolerant of people's personal beliefs, until those begin to be used to judge other people. Also, there's a bunch of assumptions being made about AM and its customers and the emails released by hackers.
    • geofft 11y ago
      I happen to agree that the business model is awful, but it's also sort of off-topic. The way in which I am displeased with someone who chooses to cheat on their spouse is very different from the way I am displeased with a company who makes money off of getting large numbers of people to cheat on their spouses, and this hack victimizes individuals more than the company. It's also very different from the way I am displeased (or really, not displeased) with someone who chose once, in a moment of weakness, to attempt to cheat on their spouse, and thought better of it shortly thereafter, or even someone who did cheat on their spouse, regretted it, apologized, and sought forgiveness. We have no idea from the data how many of those people still have email addresses and credit card numbers on file. I do wish there was a way to distinguish between "Your facts are wrong," "I disagree with your opinion," "You're off-topic," or "You might be right and on-topic but you're not constructive" when downvoting, especially since HN norms are that the first two are appropriate uses of the downvote button. (I don't think it's very likely to be the last one, in this case.)
• caseysoftware 11y ago
  That's the only way this can go. The company has three options: - Confirm that this (or any of the dumps) is the data. This almost definitely opens them up to lawsuits coming from a bunch of people who have little to lose. I say "little to lose" because a non-trivial number will be on the verge of divorce about to lose half of everything. - Keep their mouths shut and confirm/deny nothing. The press will continue on the story until they're bored and move along but that could be a long time because of the names and information involved. - Deny that this (or any of the dumps) is the data. All they have to do is keep planting the seed of doubt and some portion of the press will hesitate publishing names because they don't want to look like idiots and/or open themselves up to lawsuits. Because of course anyone with an axe to grind will make sure their opponent (or boss or whatever) is listed in one of the dumps to target them. Further, this shields some of their customers and gives those customers' divorce attorney's a "plausible" scenario to fight against. All of that said, I wonder if there's some way to validate some of the accounts with the site. If you can do that with some of the leaked data, you may be able to prove that some portion of the data set is real..
  • inversionOf 11y ago
    Given that the dump is straight mySQL dumps, nicely including geolocation data, emails, IP addresses, birth dates, and so on, I fully expect that at this very moment there are people loading servers and building search apps that will allow you to map a location or search corporate IP spaces, etc. It is inevitable, however gray the legalities are. These services are going to start appearing tomorrow with certainty, and they're going to get attention. And we know already that there is a lot of confirmed data in there. At least some of the data is unequivocally true, and the data in this latest release feels very organic.
    • mintplant 11y ago
      I don't understand why you're being downvoted here. Sites like you describe will undoubtedly pop up around this dataset.
      • 11y ago
• heimatau 11y ago
  I just read this article!! Hot news changes quickly. Originally they were debating the data since many dumps were fake but...now it's been updated less than an hour ago. Verified from Krebs three separate sources. Wow. Bummer. Illegal. Shameful. And could get painful.
• wodenokoto 11y ago
  I have signed up with a throwaway email and user name and yet I feel really uncomfortable that I receive updates from them as though nothing has happened. No "please change your password" or anything.
  • enlightenedfool 11y ago
    The front page still says "Over 38,855,000 anonymous members!"
    • idlewords 11y ago
      "Over 490 anonymous members!" would be pretty funny
  • digitalchaos 11y ago
    Surprisingly, the passwords are probably the only thing safe. Looks like they were hashed with bcrypt.
    • MarkMc 11y ago
      Well some of the passwords are safe. Bcrypt doesn't offer much protection if your password is on a list of the 10,000 most-common passwords [1]. Ashley Madison's highest priority should be to tell users to change their password on the Ashley Madison website, and any other website where they have used the same password. [1] http://www.passwordrandom.com/most-popular-passwords http://www.passwordrandom.com/most-popular-passwords
      • revicon 11y ago
        Were the passwords salted as well? If so, the "commonness" of the password wont matter.
        • mehrdada 11y ago
          How so? Run bcrypt on 10000 most common password for each salt. Much easier than trying every password possible for each individual salt.
• duncan_bayne 11y ago
  There's something poetic about people who use an Internet based service to commit adultery being exposed by crackers. With luck the fallout will break Ashley Madison too.
  • duncan_bayne 11y ago
    Repost from a different, and now I think abandoned, thread: I'm curious - I keep getting downvoted whenever I criticise Ashley Madison on the grounds of morality. Why is this? This isn't a whinge about downvoting (if I didn't want to get downvoted I wouldn't keep posting about A-M), but a genuine inquiry into the reasons. Is it that people see discussions of morality as off-topic for HN? Do people disagree with my moral judgement of A-M? Or disagree with moral judgement in general?
    • DanBC 11y ago
      I downvote a bunch of these style of posts because they're i) really unpleasant judgemental gloating or ii) idiotic assumptions.
    • gkop 11y ago
      You sound sincere. Part of it may be the fact that, generally, you are violating "judge not lest thee be judged" and specifically, outing the adulterers also stands to cause real harm to their families, and also many of us know of circumstances where covert extramarital affairs kept families together in a good way.
    • MichaelGG 11y ago
      Perhaps because people don't deserve to be punished by crackers? It's not guaranteed all users on there are harming society. It's not like it's, I dunno, Oracle getting internal documents leaked. Or Sony (and despite how bad Sony may be, some folks were rightfully concerned for the damage to innocent employees). Or BP or the USG. Overall I find it rather funny, and I gotta wonder who the hell would use such a site with their real name and billing info. Though I'm not under any delusion that it's fair, or that it's justice, except against the company itself.
    • 11y ago
• yownie 11y ago
  http://mywuwj5f76usg7eo.onion/stuff/impact-team-ashley-release.torrent http://mywuwj5f76usg7eo.onion/stuff/impact-team-ashley-relea...
  • gruez 11y ago
    magnet:?xt=urn:btih:40AE8A90DE40CA3AFA763C8EDB43FC1FC47D75F1 so you don't have to download it off tor
• minimaxir 11y ago
  Question: what are the legalities for downloading and performing analysis on the dataset? The Washington Post has downloaded the dataset for journalism (https://twitter.com/pbump/status/633844944105512964 https://twitter.com/pbump/status/633844944105512964), but I would be interested in looking at the statistics in the data for visualization purposes; however, that likely doesn't fall under journalistic shield.
  • bagels 11y ago
    I'd like to know this too. I remember seeing a talk by Facebook on Youtube by their security team that they will download these datasets to see if Facebook users have used the same passwords so that they can protect accounts. It would be unfortunate if this was less than legal.
    • illyism 11y ago
      How is Facebook able to do this if the passwords are hashed in a different manner? Are they storing passwords in plain text?
      • ZoFreX 11y ago
        They could check when you log in, I suppose.
      • deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      • burkemw3 11y ago
        The other datasets could be storing passwords in plaintext, which could be hashed using Facebook's algorithm and then compared to what Facebook stores.
      • shawn-furyan 11y ago
        You don't need to cross-reference the passwords. Matching email addresses are sufficient to warn the user. The user should be able to verify whether or not the two accounts use the same password.
• PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  The HN change from the original title ("Was the Ashley Madison Database Leaked?") seems odd. Questions in titles are usually clickbait, but in this case it is legitimately uncertain, and the article doesn't claim an definite answer.
  • Natsu 11y ago
    It's been confirmed now by multiple sources.
    • PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      The original article was specifically about the lack of concrete evidence, and didn't claim a definite answer until the update a couple of hours ago. The HN submission title had been changed before I posted, but Dang's explanation of the change posted about the same time as I did. I get it now, so by all means feel free to disagree with my original point about HN title etiquette, but please don't downvote me for failing to account for a post that arrived as I was typing mine.
      • Natsu 11y ago
        FWIW, I upvoted you as I thought it was a bit harsh.
        • PhasmaFelis 11y ago
          Appreciate it. :)
      • nothrabannosir 11y ago
        I agree. Don't take it personally; a lot of civil, even insightful comments seem to be getting downvoted in this thread. No matter the forum, there will always be a grey area between "downvote for quality" and "downvote because I disagree."
  • dang 11y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083636
• cryowaffle 11y ago
  First online checker that I found: https://ashley.cynic.al/ https://ashley.cynic.al/
  • tajano 11y ago
    I can confirm it tested negative for negatives, and positive for a positive.
    • Zombieball 11y ago
      Thanks! The best I could do was test superman@ or batman@ but the results were meaningless.
    • princeb 11y ago
      barack.obama@whitehouse.gov is in there (and verified, whatever that means), as is tblair@labour.gov.uk (unverified), pointed out by zerohedge.
      • tajano 11y ago
        I assume "verified" means that Ashley Madison's server sent a verification email to that address, and the user at that address clicked on the verification link included in that email. Certainly, someone might enter in barack.obama@whitehouse.gov for fun. Presumably, emails to that address (and the official public email address, president@whitehouse.gov) get routed somewhere. But who is checking the emails sent to the president's public address? That likely requires a team of people, one of whom might have clicked on the link.
        • chinathrow 11y ago
          Verification links gets clicked by mail scanning software (for malware, I suppose) all the time - if the GET isn't followed by a POST - the account is flagged valid.
        • wl 11y ago
          As another data point, one of my gmail addresses is in the dump (Cf. https://xkcd.com/1279/ https://xkcd.com/1279/ ) and listed as verified, despite me never clicking any verification link. Then again, I did contact support asking for them to remove my email address from the account (their response was to ask for money) and perhaps that did something.
• systematical 11y ago
  Is there any information on how they were hacked? I'm more interested in how they were compromised than anything else.
  • fencepost 11y ago
    IIRC it was taken by someone who worked there as a consultant. There were more details back at the time it was first disclosed.
• regularfry 11y ago
  Heh. If I were Ashley Madison, and I wanted to create plausible deniability for people in the real dataset, you know what I'd do? I'd create and "leak" a bunch of other datasets with generated data, and data pilfered from other hacks, to muddy the waters. "Oh, my name's in there? That must be faked up data from the Playstation Network hack years ago. Of course I'd never sign up to Ashley Madison, Mr Journalist."
  • technomancy 11y ago
    Agreed; it would be insane of them not to.
  • ibejoeb 11y ago
    I haven't seen the dataset. Is there material there that confirms its legitimacy? Are we entirely sure that this isn't just opm, target, home depot, tjx, etc? (Edit: sounds like full dataset dump: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083656) "sources who all have reported finding their information and last four digits of their credit card numbers in the leaked database." That's ambiguous, and the article indicates that there is considerable doubt as to the authenticity of this purported leak, along with a history of known fakes. Even beyond that, the article mentioned that the emails were never verified, so it sounds like any could use any name and email to establish an account. I'm sure this means trouble for some people, but there seems to be highly plausible deniability.
  • txdv 11y ago
    They signed the real data set with a key, so if you want to release. Whoever wants to release more, needs to get hands first on that private kye.
  • lordsper 11y ago
    Except there's already a verified dump out there: 40AE8A90DE40CA3AFA763C8EDB43FC1FC47D75F1 Sorry to burst your bubble, but it just won't work.
    • joaq 11y ago
• in3d 11y ago
  I'm not sure if people realize how significant this hack is. We just might have seen the first public hack that will cause people to die or be physically hurt. Homosexuality is illegal in certain countries (like Saudi Arabia) and this hack might expose people to harm in these countries. Some reactions of spouses might also be violent. It looks like the reaction of most commenters is very different compared to when Gawker exposed the Conde Naste executive. This hack might have done this very same thing to many people. On one chat website (I'm not sure if it's a good idea to post links) people are already requesting emails/domain and others are providing them. This can be used for blackmail, revenge, or to contact spouses. There will certainly be divorces resulting from this. August 19 will be the day when many people's lives were overturned. I don't know of any other hack that had such an impact in the past. Apparently, the emails listed in the leak did not require user's confirmation, so people are posting a mix of fake and real emails. I don't know if the email confirmation flag was included in the hack or not. This could easily result in people who were not involved in any way with the website to become falsely implicated. I don't see how Ashley Madison can survive this. They will surely be sued by multiple parties. This hack also supposedly shows that fake female profiles were used. Hacker's message calls it a scam with 90%-95% of users being male. This is a company that just a few months ago was thinking of an IPO and of raising $200 million (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/adultery-website-ashleymadison-seeks-ipo-as-demand-booms http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/adultery-w...).
  • asgard1024 11y ago
    > This is a company that just a few months ago was thinking of an IPO and of raising $200 million "Life is short. Have a boom!"
  • nitrogen 11y ago
    I don't know of any other hack that had such an impact in the past. The US OPM hack is probably of a similar impact due to its larger scale.
    • in3d 11y ago
      True, this OPM hack might have a huge national security impact.
• grogenaut 11y ago
  I remember back in the day (2010) when I asked pandora in email to "NEVER PLAY ME AN ADD FROM THAT SCUZZY COMPANY AGAIN"... they replied that "we only play PG ads and we vet all adds so they are appropriate to all audiences. no apologies, just "you're wrong dude". I cancelled my account and I wasn't asked to cheat on my wife on a 30 minute basis after that.
  • swagswag 11y ago
    You still together just wondering?
    • grogenaut 11y ago
      yep
• OnleMeMeMe 11y ago
  Perhaps this - at last - leads to people only submit personal data to websites who have their data encrypted in their database and a certified to have done that.
  • antocv 11y ago
    How would you certify that?
  • RyanZAG 11y ago
    The database may well have been encrypted, it's impossible to know. Obviously if you hack the database and content servers, you have access to the encryption key as well. So no, if the data was encrypted or not would not have made any difference in this case as the hackers had access to everything. Security is all-in. A checkbox like 'encrypted the database' is not any additional security by itself and is not a gauge to use in who to give data to.
  • jonlucc 11y ago
    I think it's much more likely that people will take additional precautions for themselves. Things like multiple email addresses, one-time-use credit card numbers, and VPNs will (very) slowly grow because of this.
• jokoon 11y ago
  Well the "sanctity" of marriage argument is something I don't really value, so of course there is an opportunity to make money if you get information like that. I just pity their clients, that's all I can really think about this story. I really wonder what most people would side with, the hackers, who want to unmask infidelity, or Ashley Madison and their clients, who might not deserve to be blackmailed. In a trial of Ashley Madison versus the hackers, I wonder who would prevail, because honestly I don't like neither, and I wonder if a court of justice would really protect people who engaged in infidelity. Again, the information age is really challenging our morals.
  • tripzilch 11y ago
    If the hackers actually wanted to "unmask infidelity" (in some sort of twisted sense of service to society) they couldn't have done a lazier, lower effort, shittier job at it than blindly dumping the whole AM database onto the torrents. This is like publishing the local biker bar's bar-tab, claiming you've "unmasked organised crime".
    • jokoon 11y ago
      > This is like publishing the local biker bar's bar-tab, claiming you've "unmasked organised crime". I was talking about public opinion on the subject. I'm sure there are people siding with the hackers because they're against AM. The moral of the story is always the same, be careful with your data. I don't really care about the scandal, it doesn't bother me. It's the most important problem of the centralized web architecture.
• dogweather 11y ago
  > I May Get Stoned to Death for Gay Sex (Gay Man from Saudi Arabia Who Used Ashley Madison for Hookups) > A bunch of people are accusing me of lying because 'AM is only for married people.' AM is actually about "discreet hookups," and hence its main appeal is to married people, since premarital sex isn't stigmatized in the West. But it also appeals to gays from regressive cultures, and their website has an option specifically for gays, as you can figure out if you do 5 minutes of research. https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/3ebzzj/i_may_get_stoned_to_death_for_gay_sex_gay_man/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/3ebzzj/i_may_get_ston...
  • totony 11y ago
    Why don't gays using AM just say they used it for infidelity and not homosexual hookups? Take the less of the two evils
• DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  I've thought some about this, as it looks like this kind of travesty is going to continue to happen online. Where are my personal boundaries over what is acceptable or unacceptable? It's an uncomfortable exploration. I've decided that if I am driving by a car accident -- perhaps a drunk driver careened into a bus -- I will slow down and take a good gawk. There's something in human nature that drives that impulse. I wish the people involved no harm, and I do not take any pleasure in their suffering. I will not, however, stop the car and rifle through their belongings. People who have been victims of a crime -- even bad people -- do not deserve for me to abuse them further, or take pleasure in their suffering. They certainly don't deserve to be re-victimized. But I'm 50, not 15. And I've already learned not to let strong emotions about how good or bad something is get in the the way of the larger moral debate. How to say this best? The internet is a cesspool. It's very difficult to visit without either getting dirty or smelling bad.
  • simoncion 11y ago
    > ...I will slow down and take a good gawk. I understand the impulse, but please don't do this when there's any traffic on the road. Slowing to gawk in the presence of traffic creates an area of slow that persists for a surprisingly long time. :)
• nota_bene 11y ago
  Snowden has risked his life and will be forced to remain paranoid for the entire rest of his life. His cause is noble and 100% justified. He did it for society, for us. What did we do to thank him? We labelled him a traitor and showed no support. And most of all: Almost nobody listened, almost nobody changed habits accordingly. So what does it take to make people listen and understand that our privacy is about to be completely abolished by technology? It takes exactly leaks like this one. Brutal, emotional, visible and highly controversial events.
  • Cthulhu_ 11y ago
    IIRC, Snowden has yet to be formally charged for treason; "we" didn't label or charge him for that, that's a gross generalization. I know what you mean, but you might want to tweak that wording a bit.
    • ascagnel_ 11y ago
      He was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, so it's spying, not treason as defined by the US Constitution (he hasn't levied war or adhered to an enemy, but it is possible to argue that he's provided aid to an enemy through the leaks).
  • steveeq1 11y ago
    Most people on HN, including myself, side with Edward Snowden
• joering2 11y ago
  > "We’re not denying this happened," Biderman said. "Like us or not, this is still a criminal act." That's all dandy and stuff, but I imagine majority of judges are seniors with nice families, most likely no nasty habits and probably faithful to their wives who gave them wonderful children. I'm having a hard time imagining a judge who wouldn't be biased in any court proceeding against those who trespass AM servers... that is, if they ever caught.
• nicolas_t 11y ago
  What is worrying about this is that some people are in real physical danger because of this leak. It probably seemed like fun and "social justice" for the hackers but it's not. There are people who live in countries where adultery is punishable by death. Likewise for being gay. There's already one person from Saudi Arabia who expressed his concerns on Reddit but there's likely to be a lot of other people affected. And that's not counting unbalanced individuals that might act on the perceived knowledge that their SO cheated on them. The people who released that leak are criminals and will have destroyed relationships, destroyed lives just for the sake of their ego.
  • RyanZAG 11y ago
    What is more worrying for me is that people in real physical danger would hand over that kind of information in the first place. There's very little stopping an employee at a company from selling this information to governments in these countries, or employees originating from these countries being forced to divulge the information. The real issue is that this information was freely given up in the first place. Hacks like this might make people think twice about privacy, so maybe it's a good thing in the long run?
    • DarkTree 11y ago
      yeah, but this argument quickly becomes a slippery slope. If you start questioning whether or not they should have released their private information in the first place, then you can just as easily start questioning whether the countries should be physically punishing these people for that same information. So, what's the real issue? It depends where you draw the line.
    • robertfw 11y ago
      People living their lives as they want, in spite of the threat of violence, has long been the vanguard of social change. Forcing them further underground is never a good thing in the long run
    • mikeash 11y ago
      Why is that worrying? If you're a gay Saudi Arabian (for example) then the only way to be safe is to be celibate. That's not an option for many people. If they weren't hooking up on AM, they'd be using some other service, or making discreet passes at acquaintances, or visiting places where gay people are known to frequent and hoping very strongly that it doesn't get raided while you're there. AM was probably one of the safest options available.
• marincounty 11y ago
  I've never felt just because it's legal--it's fine. In fact, some of the worst/slimiest people I know make their money in a legal fashion. Some of the best people I know, have broken societal laws. When I heard Ashley Madion was hacked, I knew laws were broken, but I really didn't care. I don't like sites/places that make the spread of disease too easy. Kinda like when they closed/modified the rules to the bath houses. I know we need laws in a civilized society. Did these hackers break the law--yes. Do I care--no! Not in this particular case. What really bothers me is Ashley Madion didn't stand behind their members. Ashley Madison left their database open. I don't know how, but they were hacked. They were given an opportunity to protect the identity of their members, but they didn't agree to the Hacker's demands. I don't know if the Hackers would have kept their word? But if I owned Ashley Madison, I would have shut down the site immediately-- without discussion. I would have figured, I screwed up; I owe it to the people that trusted me to do the right thing. Companies need to protect customers personal information--even if it means shutting down. We all know why they didn't shut the site down. They didn't have a lot of high moral reasons to keep it open. The Hackers had this company completely exposed. Ashley Madison lost the war. The only reason they are still open, and their personal customer data was released is because of one reason--Money! (I don't know how many people this company employed. If it was a large number, that might be valid reason to keep it open? I just doubt they have a lot of employees? They haven't even gone public yet? I heard they were scheduled for a big IPO?)
• hlfw0rd 11y ago
  Strange, I would expect hackers to be the first to reject the silly social construct of monogamy. I think this is ridiculous and nearly pointless. The only benefit I see is exposing how carelessly ALM handled personal data. However, they could have accomplished this while still blinding the data. Edit: Not sure why this warrants downvotes..
  • PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    I'm downvoting you because it's ridiculous to say that monogamy is purely a social construct. It genuinely matters to some people, even if they're okay with polygamy as a general concept. There is nothing wrong with consensual open relationships, and we'd all be better off if the social stigma around them went away, but consensual is the key word. It's not okay to promise someone monogamy and then break your word behind their back. Do not assume that the way you feel about something is the one true correct way and anyone who disagrees has been brainwashed by The Man.
• icedchai 11y ago
  This is unfortunate, but was easily avoidable. If you sign up for a site like this, take reasonable precautions. This means an alternate email account (and obviously a fake name.) If you actually subscribe, use a prepaid debit card ("gift card") not directly linked to your actual name or bank account.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • pcthrowaway 11y ago
    As someone who's done this (not for ashleymadison), it's not necessarily 'easy'. Also, many sites that take recurring payments won't allow you to use a prepaid card.
    • icedchai 11y ago
      I've done it for some other sites, though not recurring though. My guess is if there's enough balance on the prepaid card (for a pre-auth?), it will work.
      • pcthrowaway 11y ago
        I never used AM, but I assume they authorized payments on a subscription (recurring) basis, like every other dating site. If that's the case, the kind of pre-auth is different, and one which prepaid cards would reject.
• makecheck 11y ago
  One of the unfortunate outcomes I expect from this is immediate retribution against the "owners" of faked accounts. Not only can convincing web site accounts be created easily but E-mails that "prove" ownership can also be faked. There is a side of modern society that does not have either the patience or sense of fairness to verify something before acting on it. Put another way, what do you think would happen to you if an "account" was leaked that, indeed, had your picture, name, E-mail address and home city? Do you really think that the first 10 messages you receive from people will be to confirm that the account is yours? No: my money is on you losing 40 Facebook friends immediately, receiving several vitriolic messages, a pink slip from your boss and some screaming phone calls before maybe — maybe — one friend with sense then asks if you actually created the account.
  • eljimmy 11y ago
    The leak contains credit card transactions associated with the cardholder's name. Could those be faked? I suppose. You have a 1/9999 chance of guessing the right 4 digits of someone's credit card.
    • shawn-furyan 11y ago
      Or, assuming you are acquainted with the person you dislike, you could go out to lunch with them, and offer to split the bill...
• cekanoni 11y ago
  And now all the websites to check if your data is leaked or not. And that's when stealing infos comes on it place.
• paulhauggis 11y ago
  I'm actually happy this happened. When the private conversation of Donald Sterling was leaked..it didn't matter..because morally, he did something wrong and needed to have everything taken away from him. When it was leaked that the Mozilla CEO donated a small amount of money to a cause that angered the left, it didn't matter how we got the information. He was bullied online (and offline) until he resigned. When Wikileaks leaked the locations of covert soldiers in foreign countries, we had many people here on HN saying it doesn't matter if they even get killed..they shouldn't have been there in the first place. I was down voted and silenced for saying anything contrary to this or even having an opinion on it that didn't fit the narrative. But somehow, because it probably effects people here on HN (and cheating isn't really a problem), it draws the line. So, to me, this is justice. If you cheat and don't use a fake name...and your spouse/boss/newspapers/family find out that you are on this list. It's your own fault and you deserve what you get. Let this be a lesson to you all: You should protect the rights of everyone, even if you don't agree with what they are saying. Otherwise, people like me won't protect your rights when the same thing happens to you. If want the bullying to stop for being gay...it's a little absurd that a person with a different set of religious beliefs than your own deserves to get bullied in the same way (and it's justified). In fact, I might just make a website that utilizes all of the data and cross-references Facebook, family, friends, etc...or a bot that automatically contacts them. To make it easier to find out if your spouse is cheating. It's similar to how the GNU uses the existing system to promote freedom. This should bring about a discussion about privacy and why bullying someone online and destroying personal lives (or firing someone) for a person's lifestyle or opinions is not good for society and is wrong.
  • tripzilch 11y ago
    > When Wikileaks leaked the locations of covert soldiers in foreign countries, we had many people here on HN saying it doesn't matter if they even get killed..they shouldn't have been there in the first place. I was down voted and silenced for saying anything contrary to this or even having an opinion on it that didn't fit the narrative. Because that would be misrepresenting the narrative. Link to the "many people here on HN saying it doesn't matter if they get killed"? The closest I've seen was people calling out and asking for any evidence that even a single soldier was killed because of these leaks. Because there isn't any. If it were, we wouldn't have heard the end of it in the mainstream media. Any few comments about people actually arguing (these) people's lives do not matter, I expect to see at the bottom of a thread, flagged and with heavy downvotes. While I strongly agree with those asking for evidence, I spit on the latter.
• dreamdu5t 11y ago
  What's amazing is the extent people go to downplay the harm and immority of infidelity. Hacking should be a crime but lying and willful harm using false pretense (cheating) is not...? Really shows how bankrupt our moral culture is.
  • moosey 11y ago
    Morality and ethics are relative though. There are many couples that have open relationships and might have used this site. They would be fine with finding their spouse in the data. However, the same person's boss might not agree, and now they have access to this information. Someone might find themselves on a performance plan for no obvious reason. This is a treasure trove for people who want to force their version of ethics and morality on other people.
• hlfw0rd 11y ago
  Cue the automated blackmail emails requesting bitcoin to be delivered... etc..
• martin1975 11y ago
  On the bright side, the one thing this unfortunate incident will do is create an opening for many couples to reconcile, now that the truth is out. "We cannot be facile and say bygones will be bygones, because they will not be bygones and will return to haunt us. True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness, which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know. - Desmond Tutu
  • joaq 11y ago
    Once a cheater always a cheater. There's some kind of gaussian curve in this regard (like in so many other human attributes). Some people will never cheat, while others will cheat very frequently and most people are somewhere in between. I've done a lot of research on this, there are a lot of facts that affect someone's propensity to cheat including their number of sexual partners, level of education, marital status of their parents, children born out of wedlock, cohabitation with original partner, etc. etc. It's not that hard to find someone unlikely to cheat when you start analyzing the data.
    • tanderson92 11y ago
      source please?
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
• littletimmy 11y ago
  Those who are moralizing about client info being leaked, would you be as aghast about information about child rapists being leaked? The principle is the same. In both cases there is an aggrieved party (spouse vs child). Both cases need to be put to a stop. It worries me that someone's private information was leaked. On principle I am against this. But there's some justice to it, so I also like it a little.
  • joaq 11y ago
    I feel the same way. Cheating on someone is akin to taking a shit on their self-esteem. Morally repulsive that this happens as frequently as it does, so I actually feel great that many of that cheating scum is exposed and I hope their names are exposed for good. IMHO.
• ZeroFries 11y ago
  I think we can all agree that privacy violations are wrong. Therefore, only by preventing a greater harm can something like this be considered justified. It's too bad a cost benefit analysis is so tricky here. Exposing cheaters could prevent further cheating, but it could also cause serious identify theft. In the end, I think the line is too blurry to seriously justify the breach.
  • tripzilch 11y ago
    The amount of dickheads (aka the people that actually harmed others or did really badwrong stuff) that will truly end up getting "what they deserve" (in the eyes those who see it that way), is probably going to be a rather small subset of the total amount of exposed dicks on that site, regardless of how broad a brush of wrongdoing you want to paint with. Even if there is a part of the leaked users that, if I were to know exactly about their situations, I might agree totally deserve to be outed because of their really shitty and reprehensible actions it just doesn't weigh up against everything else: - This isn't the Jerry Springer show. No matter the level of dickhead move, the outing doesn't need to be this public for the world. If only for the sake of the wronged parties. - That gay Saudi guy who now risks being put to death because of this leak, and others like him, they chose AM because it advertised secrecy and discretion, which obviously turned out to be a mistake, but whatever the hackers claim their motive is, leaking the data was a much bigger mistake. - The incredible amount of domestic abuse fallout that this outing is going to cause. - The children. - People that got an account for whatever reason but caught themselves as they realized wtf they were about to throw away. - Relationships that actually worked hard to get through and over a difficult time, now being confronted again, except this time the mess they wanted to put behind them lies out on the streets for everyone to see. - People that got an account for shits and giggles. Fake names, fake accounts, fake email adresses and anyone getting caught in the shitstorm surrounding this. I can think of so many more examples of situations getting caught in the crossfire. And really, you know that a large part of the slimiest dickheads are still going to get away with this, no matter what.
• pessimizer 11y ago
  Turn out to still be dangerous to have important, personal information about you stored by a corporation. Turns out that computers are no safer than filing cabinets. Why would we think they were?
• tristor 11y ago
  I think what is often getting lost in the bustle is that not everyone who had an account on Ashley Madison was a married person committing infidelity. These people too have had their information exposed. I am one of them. I signed up for Ashley Madison many years ago on a whim, without much thought put into it. I'm single, have never been married, have never even been into a committed relationship. I also never used any site services or paid any subscriptions fees. The sum total of my experience has been getting spam emails for a number of years. Yet, I too am one of the people who is being "outed" by this hack. We all need to pause for a moment, put down the torches and pitchforks, and understand that there are broader more nuanced realities than the simplistic and self-righteous one we'd choose to believe when looking at the net result of this hack.
• dboreham 11y ago
  Regarding the "we don't have the CC data" aspect of this: I think it is possible that the management, senior engineering staff etc believed that they were not storing any part of the credit card number, but in fact they were. I say this because in my career I have seen several cases where we had : contracts signed, policy documents written, things said in meetings over and over; all making it clear that information of some type was not to be retained. However, when I inspected production database tables and examined log files, it turned out that said data was in fact present. Bottom line: someone has to follow up and verify that nothing is being stored that shouldn't, and that exercise has to be repeated periodically in case something changes over time.
• LordKano 11y ago
  I have little to no sympathy for the people who are embarrassed by this release. They willingly signed up on a site that's intended use is for people to cheat on their spouses. Society doesn't take marriage as seriously as it used to but I happen to think that it means something.
• tronreg 11y ago
  This is hacker news bitches, y'all should be into this shit. "Ashley Madison" is a company dedicated to profiting from people lying to their spouses. Lighten up on the data privacy aspect and cheer your anonymous bros for bringing some justice.
  • monochromatic 11y ago
    Hacker != cracker
• Mike999 11y ago
  Fuck I hate you pathetic liberal morons. This is an intentional leak/hack by the new world order to demonise males and suffuse the media with leftist, feminist nonsense. The usual libtard useless eaters will lap it up and of course ignore the government destroying all our rights, murdering hundreds of thousands in the middle east, funding ISIS and Al Qaeda, persecuting whistleblowers and passing the TPPA which give immense powers to bankers and corporations over western countries. Women are so entitled, when they cheat suddenly it's the man's fault. Let me educate you liberal idiots about feminism, you've all been duped, it's a political social engineering psy-op. Real women realise that feminism these days is nonsense. It's actually social engineering by the central banking/corporate oligarchy that control the western governments and the media to make society weaker, and more easy to control and manipulate. Classic 'divide and conquer'. Masculinise women and feminise men, empower women, subjugate men, and confuse the gender roles to make male/female relationships hard to form as men have evolved to compliment and protect women, not compete with them, marriage is at an all-time low as a result. This male feminisation and subjugation weakens men who are more likely to challenge authority and are physically much more of a threat to authority and also destroys the family, the primary goal. Family provides social cohesion and resistance to tyranny, thus they must destroy the family and divide society. They cannot tolerate devotion to family before the state. The same principle applies to why they've orchestrated such a massive anti-religion campaign in the media and popular culture, the power elite cannot tolerate devotion to a God before the state, especially a God that promotes individual rights, family values and absolute morality. I'm not religious but I recognise social engineering propaganda when I see it. So recognise the people behind all of this, the militant deluded, poisonous feminists are puppet dupes, as are the media and even the politicians. The real villains are the central banking power elite, Rothschild, Rockefella, Kissinger, Morgan, brzezinski and such people. The owners of the Federal reserve and the people behind the IMF World Bank and the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) are the ones behind the majority of the world's problems, war, financial collapse toxins, viruses etc as they enter the endgame of their plan for world government in which they create chaos and division to offer up their world government as the solution. Another key aspect stemming from the destruction of the family and the forcing of women into the workplace via social feminist propaganda and economic manipulation is that children become raised by the State. They can get force fed constant establishment propaganda throughout their lives with a heavily reduced parental influence. Bottom line, there's a sinister political agenda at work designed to subvert gender roles, subjugate and disempower men and erode the family.
• Mike999 11y ago
  Fuck I hate you pathetic liberal morons. This is an intentional leak/hack by the new world order to demonise males and suffuse the media with leftist, feminist nonsense. The usual libtard useless eaters will lap it up and of course ignore the government destroying all our rights, murdering hundreds of thousands in the middle east, funding ISIS and Al Qaeda, persecuting whistleblowers and passing the TPPA which give immense powers to bankers and corporations over western countries. Women are so entitled, when they cheat suddenly it's the man's fault. Let me educate you liberal idiots about feminism, you've all been duped, it's a political social engineering psy-op. Real women realise that feminism these days is nonsense. It's actually social engineering by the central banking/corporate oligarchy that control the western governments and the media to make society weaker, and more easy to control and manipulate. Classic 'divide and conquer'. Masculinise women and feminise men, empower women, subjugate men, and confuse the gender roles to make male/female relationships hard to form as men have evolved to compliment and protect women, not compete with them, marriage is at an all-time low as a result. This male feminisation and subjugation weakens men who are more likely to challenge authority and are physically much more of a threat to authority and also destroys the family, the primary goal. Family provides social cohesion and resistance to tyranny, thus they must destroy the family and divide society. They cannot tolerate devotion to family before the state. The same principle applies to why they've orchestrated such a massive anti-religion campaign in the media and popular culture, the power elite cannot tolerate devotion to a God before the state, especially a God that promotes individual rights, family values and absolute morality. I'm not religious but I recognise social engineering propaganda when I see it. So recognise the people behind all of this, the militant deluded, poisonous feminists are puppet dupes, as are the media and even the politicians. The real villains are the central banking power elite, Rothschild, Rockefella, Kissinger, Morgan, brzezinski and such people. The owners of the Federal reserve and the people behind the IMF World Bank and the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) are the ones behind the majority of the world's problems, war, financial collapse toxins, viruses etc as they enter the endgame of their plan for world government in which they create chaos and division to offer up their world government as the solution. Another key aspect stemming from the destruction of the family and the forcing of women into the workplace via social feminist propaganda and economic manipulation is that children become raised by the State. They can get force fed constant establishment propaganda throughout their lives with a heavily reduced parental influence. Bottom line, there's a sinister political agenda at work designed to subvert gender roles, subjugate and disempower men and erode the family.
• Mike999 11y ago
  Pathetic liberal morons. This is an intentional leak/hack by the new world order to demonise males and suffuse the media with leftist, feminist nonsense. The usual libtard useless eaters will lap it up and of course ignore the government destroying all our rights, murdering hundreds of thousands in the middle east, funding ISIS and Al Qaeda, persecuting whistleblowers and passing the TPPA which give immense powers to bankers and corporations over western countries. Women are so entitled, when they cheat suddenly it's the man's fault. Let me educate you liberal idiots about feminism, you've all been duped, it's a political social engineering psy-op. Real women realise that feminism these days is nonsense. It's actually social engineering by the central banking/corporate oligarchy that control the western governments and the media to make society weaker, and more easy to control and manipulate. Classic 'divide and conquer'. Masculinise women and feminise men, empower women, subjugate men, and confuse the gender roles to make male/female relationships hard to form as men have evolved to compliment and protect women, not compete with them, marriage is at an all-time low as a result. This male feminisation and subjugation weakens men who are more likely to challenge authority and are physically much more of a threat to authority and also destroys the family, the primary goal. Family provides social cohesion and resistance to tyranny, thus they must destroy the family and divide society. They cannot tolerate devotion to family before the state. The same principle applies to why they've orchestrated such a massive anti-religion campaign in the media and popular culture, the power elite cannot tolerate devotion to a God before the state, especially a God that promotes individual rights, family values and absolute morality. I'm not religious but I recognise social engineering propaganda when I see it. So recognise the people behind all of this, the militant deluded, poisonous feminists are puppet dupes, as are the media and even the politicians. The real villains are the central banking power elite, Rothschild, Rockefella, Kissinger, Morgan, brzezinski and such people. The owners of the Federal reserve and the people behind the IMF World Bank and the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) are the ones behind the majority of the world's problems, war, financial collapse toxins, viruses etc as they enter the endgame of their plan for world government in which they create chaos and division to offer up their world government as the solution. Another key aspect stemming from the destruction of the family and the forcing of women into the workplace via social feminist propaganda and economic manipulation is that children become raised by the State. They can get force fed constant establishment propaganda throughout their lives with a heavily reduced parental influence. Bottom line, there's a sinister political agenda at work designed to subvert gender roles, subjugate and disempower men and erode the family.