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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.

by 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.
  - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    Does anybody need to restate the obvious: Go through the OPM leak and cross-check everybody with TS-SCI clearance with the AM database. Bingo-presto, big list of folks you can blackmail to do government favors. Take about 2 minutes.
    - simoncion 11y ago
      If you're blackmailable, or financially in dire straits, you should not hold a TS clearance. Seriously. End of story. If someone with a TS clearance ever has someone attempt to blackmail them, they're obligated to tell their boss and security officer(s).
      - mikeash 11y ago
        It's a good thing the process for deciding who gets a clearance is completely foolproof....
        simoncion 11y ago
        Part of what makes the system work as well as it does is honesty. Honesty and integrity are two of the things that the clearance interviews look for.
      - Balgair 11y ago
        True, but giving the gov your blackmail file and giving your kid's nosy 3rd grade school teacher your blackmail file are different things. It is not difficult to imagine a person with a TS using AM, telling their boss about 'that one time' or not even worrying to tell them, having their OPM data flung to outer Bongolia, and then having this AM data bounced about. Though people should be better about updating their blackmail files at HQ.gov, they are not. These hacks in conjunction are really going to make a mess of things going forward. If you were thinking of giving the gov your blackmail file, you may be rethinking that info, as it seems to uninformed people (which are most of us on HN) that you may be better at keeping your personal secrets than the gov is. A chilling effect indeed.
dogweather 11y ago
> 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. This is exactly what is playing out: > I was single, but used it because I am gay; gay sex is punishable by death in my home country so I wanted to keep my hookups extremely discreet. I only used AM to hook up with single guys. . . 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...
rmc 11y ago
> Homosexuality is illegal in certain countries (like Saudi Arabia) and this hack might expose people to harm in these countries. Heck, there's still gay bashing going on in Western countries, regardless of the legality of homosexuality.
humanrebar 11y ago
> We just might have seen the first public hack that will cause people to die or be physically hurt. Whether you like them or not, I'd be more surprised of a murder from this info than one from the Bradley and Manning leaks.
- TWAndrews 11y ago
  Then you're really unfamiliar with the dynamics of domestic abuse. I'd be more surprised if violence was not the result of this.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>Homosexuality is illegal in certain countries (like Saudi Arabia) and this hack might expose people to harm in these countries. To me this is the same logic as saying that Manning/Snowden brought people to harm. Now if you already agree with that, no problem, but I wonder about people who follow this line of reasoning for this release but not for the Manning/Snowden releases.
- jnky 11y ago
  > [...] but I wonder about people who follow this line of reasoning for this release but not for the Manning/Snowden releases. I think it would be easy to argue that the leaks of Manning and Snowden are justified because they exposed illegal and reprehensible activity from the government; an entity that should be held to the highest moral standard. Users of this site generally did nothing illegal and they wronged at most one other person each.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    If leaks can be justified, then it becomes a moral question of what justifies it. For some, adultery is enough to justify a leak, for others it is not (some of which do think the government wronging many people is justified). The core question is one of how bad does a leaked behavior need to be for a leak to be morally justified. As far as it not being illegal, any moral system that determines morality based on legality is a system I find fault in.
BrandonMarc 11y ago
> We just might have seen the first public hack that will cause people to die or be physically hurt. When Wikileaks put out the US state dept cables, there were plenty of names of intelligence sources within Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc that weren't redacted. Many of these people were discovered and killed immediately. Alluded to here: http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy-rides-again/ http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy-rides-... ... and here: http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/08/03/just-us/ http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/08/03/just-us/

by in3d 11y ago

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.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Does anybody need to restate the obvious: Go through the OPM leak and cross-check everybody with TS-SCI clearance with the AM database. Bingo-presto, big list of folks you can blackmail to do government favors. Take about 2 minutes.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    If you're blackmailable, or financially in dire straits, you should not hold a TS clearance. Seriously. End of story. If someone with a TS clearance ever has someone attempt to blackmail them, they're obligated to tell their boss and security officer(s).
    - mikeash 11y ago
      It's a good thing the process for deciding who gets a clearance is completely foolproof....
      - simoncion 11y ago
        Part of what makes the system work as well as it does is honesty. Honesty and integrity are two of the things that the clearance interviews look for.
    - Balgair 11y ago
      True, but giving the gov your blackmail file and giving your kid's nosy 3rd grade school teacher your blackmail file are different things. It is not difficult to imagine a person with a TS using AM, telling their boss about 'that one time' or not even worrying to tell them, having their OPM data flung to outer Bongolia, and then having this AM data bounced about. Though people should be better about updating their blackmail files at HQ.gov, they are not. These hacks in conjunction are really going to make a mess of things going forward. If you were thinking of giving the gov your blackmail file, you may be rethinking that info, as it seems to uninformed people (which are most of us on HN) that you may be better at keeping your personal secrets than the gov is. A chilling effect indeed.

dogweather 11y ago

> 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. This is exactly what is playing out: > I was single, but used it because I am gay; gay sex is punishable by death in my home country so I wanted to keep my hookups extremely discreet. I only used AM to hook up with single guys. . . 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...

rmc 11y ago

> Homosexuality is illegal in certain countries (like Saudi Arabia) and this hack might expose people to harm in these countries. Heck, there's still gay bashing going on in Western countries, regardless of the legality of homosexuality.

humanrebar 11y ago

> We just might have seen the first public hack that will cause people to die or be physically hurt. Whether you like them or not, I'd be more surprised of a murder from this info than one from the Bradley and Manning leaks.

TWAndrews 11y ago
Then you're really unfamiliar with the dynamics of domestic abuse. I'd be more surprised if violence was not the result of this.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>Homosexuality is illegal in certain countries (like Saudi Arabia) and this hack might expose people to harm in these countries. To me this is the same logic as saying that Manning/Snowden brought people to harm. Now if you already agree with that, no problem, but I wonder about people who follow this line of reasoning for this release but not for the Manning/Snowden releases.

jnky 11y ago
> [...] but I wonder about people who follow this line of reasoning for this release but not for the Manning/Snowden releases. I think it would be easy to argue that the leaks of Manning and Snowden are justified because they exposed illegal and reprehensible activity from the government; an entity that should be held to the highest moral standard. Users of this site generally did nothing illegal and they wronged at most one other person each.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  If leaks can be justified, then it becomes a moral question of what justifies it. For some, adultery is enough to justify a leak, for others it is not (some of which do think the government wronging many people is justified). The core question is one of how bad does a leaked behavior need to be for a leak to be morally justified. As far as it not being illegal, any moral system that determines morality based on legality is a system I find fault in.

BrandonMarc 11y ago

> We just might have seen the first public hack that will cause people to die or be physically hurt. When Wikileaks put out the US state dept cables, there were plenty of names of intelligence sources within Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc that weren't redacted. Many of these people were discovered and killed immediately. Alluded to here: http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy-rides-again/ http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy-rides-... ... and here: http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/08/03/just-us/ http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/08/03/just-us/