Fifteen thousand U.S. government workers - including White House staff - among 37 million cheating spouses identified in hack of Ashley Madison adultery site

• Millions of users of the cheaters' dating site Ashley Madison have been identified in the huge global hack
• A 9.7 gigabyte data file of user's personal details was posted to the dark web on Wednesday
• It includes private data including name, address, phone number and credit card details as well as sexual fantasies and profile photos
• Washington D.C. has the highest rate of membership across the U.S. and at least 15,000 are from government agencies using .gov and .mil domain names
• They include the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, the House and the Senate

DailyMail.com | August 19, 2015

Thousands of cheating spouses working in the highest quarters of the U.S. government have been identified today in a major global hack of adultery dating site Ashley Madison.

Users of the infidelity site were sent scrambling to control the damage - and save their marriages - after hackers exposed them and dumped 9.7 gigabytes of personal data about the controversial seduction forum used by 37 million worldwide.

Names, ages, addresses, phone numbers, credit card details and detailed sexual fantasies have been leaked.

15,000 users have been found to be registered under .gov and .mil email addresses - the official domain names of the American military and government. Other institutions rocked by the leaks include famed educational institutions like Harvard and Yale, and global bodies such as the Vatican and the UN.



Employers from huge companies such as Boeing, JP Morgan, Bank of America and Sony were also said to be part of the list.

The website has long boasted about their D.C. recruits - claiming 59,000 residents are currently members.
The district has had the highest number of registrations across America for the last three years.

Many of the leaked profiles show how users were sharing their political beliefs in a bids to entice like-minded potential lovers. Profiles come entitled, 'a Democrat who loves to kiss' or 'Staunchly Non-Republican but otherwise very open-minded', according to the Washington Post.

[In-Depth Coverage] More at link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3203795/Fifteen-thousand-U-S-government-workers-including-White-House-staff-37-million-cheating-spouses-identified-hack-Ashley-Madison-adultery-dating-site.html

Hackers dump SECOND, even bigger batch of Ashley Madison records with taunting message to millionaire founder of 'cheating dirtbag' site

• Reports of a second wave of secret documents revealed from the hacked infidelity site
• Hackers 'the Impact Team' posted another huge tranche - amounting to 20GB of files - on the same dark web
• They boasted of the second wave directly to the beleaguered company's CEO multi-millionaire Noel Biderman
• 'Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now', the message read
• The company has refused to admit all the information that has been released came from their site
• First wave included 9.7 gigabytes of raw data including names, addresses, phone numbers and sexual fantasies of registered users
• University of Texas, Sony, Boeing and Bank of America all appear in domain names of alleged users posted online
• Government workers with sensitive White House, law enforcement and congress jobs have admitted using the site after being exposed
• Pentagon and FBI are now investigating the leak amid fears it provides potential for blackmail of government officials

DAILYMAIL.COM | August 21, 2015



A second, even bigger, cache of files exposing details about the adultery website Ashley Madison has been released.

Hacking group 'the Impact team' at lunchtime on Thursday released another mine of documents and confidential information to back up their first 9.7 gigabyte leak, according to Vice.

The new documents were dumped with a taunting message to the adultery website's founder as exposed users began to publicly admit their involvement.

'Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now,' read the post - presumably directed at the company's millionaire CEO Noel Biderman, who has refused to admit the material is all legitimate.

The 20GB is focused on the inner workings of the website rather than individual subscribers but the release will do little to calm the nerves of the cheaters whose personal details have been exposed.

[In-Depth Coverage] More at link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3205189/Hackers-dump-SECOND-bigger-batch-Ashley-Madison-records-taunting-message-millionaire-founder-cheating-dirtbag-site.html

AshleyMadison data fueled extortion attempts, suicides, police say

The Miami Herald | August 24, 2015,
By Gerrit DeVynck, Bloomberg News

Law enforcement agencies have found evidence of extortion attempts related to the hacking of AshleyMadison.com, a website that facilitates hook-ups between would-be adulterers.

Blackmail attempts have been made against people whose personal information may have been included among data released by the hackers last week, Toronto Police Acting Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans said at a news conference Monday. There also have been two unconfirmed reports of suicides related to the data release, he said.

“This isn’t fun and games anymore, this is reality, it’s affecting all of us,” Evans said. “We’re talking about families, we’re talking about children.”

Hackers released information they say includes details of more than 36 million users of the site, which openly encourages adultery with its tagline, “Life is short, have an affair.” Evans confirmed the data includes names, home addresses, transaction records and partial credit card information. AshleyMadison’s parent company, Avid Life Media Inc., is based in Toronto.

[...]
Avid Life Media is offering a C$500,000 ($378,000) award for information that helps identify the hackers, Evans said. He appealed to members of the hacking community for help and had a message for “Team Impact,” the name the hackers are using to identify themselves.

“I want to make it very clear to you: your actions are illegal,” Evans said. “This is your wake-up call.”

More at link: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article32102982.html

Ashley Madison faked female profiles to lure men in, hacked data suggest

The Washington Post
By Caitlin Dewey | August 25, 2015, 5:28PM ET

Ashley Madison has long claimed, in triumphant news releases and slick, Web-ready graphics, that it is one of the few dating sites that really clicks with women. According to statistics CEO Noah Biderman has trumpeted in the media, Ashley Madison enjoys an overall 70/30 gender split — with a 1:1 male/female ratio among the under-30 set.

But the user records laid bare by hackers last week tell a very different story: Of the more than 35 million records released, only 5 million — a mere 15 percent — actually belonged to women.

This discrepancy may be the smoking gun that proves something angry users, industry insiders and government watchdogs have alleged for some time: that when it comes to reporting their own user numbers, paid-dating sites distort, manipulate … and sometimes straight-up lie.

“Ashley Madison has paid people to write profiles, and they’ve allowed fake profiles to proliferate on their site,” said David Evans, an industry consultant who has contracted with Ashley Madison in the past and has tracked the business of online dating since 2002. “Tons of sites are guilty of that. That’s not news.”

More at link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/08/25/ashley-madison-faked-female-profiles-to-lure-men-in-hacked-data-suggest/

This is the worst password from the Ashley Madison hack
After cracking 4,000 passwords, one decrypted password floated to the top of the list. And it's not for the first time.

ZDNet
By Zack Whittaker | August 26, 2015, 4:03PM ET

When hackers swiped an estimated 36 million accounts associated with AshleyMadison.com, a site which helps married people cheat on their partners, there was a rush to find out what had been stolen.

A month after the breach was reported, hackers released the first cache of stolen data. Email addresses, credit card transactions, and more were leaked on August 18. More data, released days later, included internal emails at the website's parent company, Avid Life Media.



[...]
The most common password was "123456," which scores a zero on the imagination scale, while, perhaps worse, "password" ranked in second place. (You can download the full list from Google Drive, where Pierce uploaded the data.)

In comparison to Adobe's data breach in 2013, which led to the release of 38 million Adobe usernames and passwords, the cracked AshleyMadison.com passwords are just as bad. That's because the most popular password for almost two million Adobe customers was also "123456." It seems lessons from the past weren't learned, because when Yahoo suffered a data breach in 2012, the same password, "123456," was top of the list.

More at link: http://www.zdnet.com/article/these-are- ... ison-hack/

Researcher claims he's found the Ashley Madison hacker

Fortune.com
by Benjamin Snyder | August 27, 2015, 10:52AM EDT

It could be Twitter user Thadeus Zu.

The Ashley Madison hack, which posted the information over 32 million accounts, may have been performed by the Twitter user with the name “Thadeus Zu,” according to a security researcher.

Brian Krebs, the researcher, pointed to the account’s owner based on past postings to the social media side and other Twitter information that led him to believe he’s part of the “Impact Team” responsible for the attack. But Thadeus Zu has spoken out against the accusations, tweeting, “They’re eyeballing the wrong dude here, man,” according to the publication.

Krebs has targeted Zu for numerous reasons, including citing information that Zu has hacked government sites in the past and has played AC/DC songs once the hack was completed. The Ashley Madison hack, meanwhile, had the song “Thunderstruck” played from the company’s computers.

Per the Independent: "He also appeared to tweet links to the huge data dumps from the hacks, before they were picked up by the mainstream media, according to Krebs. Krebs said his initial interest in the account had come about because it posted a link to Ashley Madison source data soon after it was released."

“Thadeus Zu — whoever and wherever he is in real life — may not have been directly involved in the Ashley Madison hack; he claims in several tweets that he was not part of the hack, but then in countless tweets he uses the royal “We” when discussing the actions and motivations of the Impact Team,” according to Krebs.

“But one thing is clear: If Zu wasn’t involved in the hack, he almost certainly knows who was,” added Krebs.

Resource: http://fortune.com/2015/08/27/researcher-ashley-madison-hacker/