Aa
Evidence of infidelities spreads online in wake of hack
Aug 20, 11:17 AM (ET)
By RAPHAEL SATTER
LONDON (AP) — Husbands and wives across the world are waking up to their partners' extramarital affairs after a catastrophic leak at adultery website Ashley Madison spewed electronic evidence of infidelity across the Internet.
Online forums were buzzing Thursday with users claiming to have found evidence that their significant others were on the site. In Britain and Israel, parliamentarians have been put on the defensive after their email addresses were identified in the trove. And in Australia, one woman appeared to learn — live on air — that her husband's details were registered with the site.
Family law experts are divided on the likely offline impact of the leak, but Los Angeles-based divorce lawyer Steve Mindel predicted an uptick in business for him and his colleagues.
"We're all saying: 'It's going to be Christmas in September,'" Mindel said. "Pretty soon all of this stuff is going to surface and there's going to be a lot of filings for divorce directly as a result of this."
Ashley Madison marketed itself as the premier venue for cheating spouses before data stolen by hackers started spreading across the Internet earlier this week. The prospect of finding the name of a loved one or an acquaintance amid the site's more than 35 million registered members has drawn strong interest worldwide.
Websites devoted to checking emails against the leaked data appeared to be experiencing heavy traffic. Forums such as Reddit — the user-powered news and discussion site — carried stories of anguished husbands and wives confronting their partners after finding their data among the massive dump of information.
When the hosts of a morning show in Sydney, Australia, asked listeners to phone in if they wanted their spouse's details run through the database, a woman called saying she was suspicious because her husband had been acting strangely since the news of the leak broke. The hosts plugged his details into a website and said they found a match.
"Are you serious? Are you freaking kidding me?" the woman asked, her voice shaking. "These websites are disgusting." She then hung up.
Journalists were also combing through the data, looking for the names of celebrities, politicians or religious leaders. Their task has been complicated by the fact that many of the profiles were tied to fake or borrowed email addresses, which users did not necessarily have to validate.
In Britain, Scottish lawmaker Michelle Thomson said an obsolete email address had been "harvested by hackers" and used to register an account with the site. A similar explanation was offered by Talab Abu Arar, a Bedouin Arab lawmaker in Israel whose parliamentary email address was found amid the dump.
"Someone wanted simply to hurt my good name ... it is very annoying," he told Israel's Army Radio.
Like many Bedouin Arabs, Abu Arar practices polygamy and has a wife and a common-law partner. With two partners, he said, why would he need a website?
"I'm not lacking in women," he said with a chuckle.
---
Kristen Gelineau in Sydney and Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20150820/cheating-website-81f48f6f2d.html
By RAPHAEL SATTER
LONDON (AP) — Husbands and wives across the world are waking up to their partners' extramarital affairs after a catastrophic leak at adultery website Ashley Madison spewed electronic evidence of infidelity across the Internet.
Online forums were buzzing Thursday with users claiming to have found evidence that their significant others were on the site. In Britain and Israel, parliamentarians have been put on the defensive after their email addresses were identified in the trove. And in Australia, one woman appeared to learn — live on air — that her husband's details were registered with the site.
Family law experts are divided on the likely offline impact of the leak, but Los Angeles-based divorce lawyer Steve Mindel predicted an uptick in business for him and his colleagues.
"We're all saying: 'It's going to be Christmas in September,'" Mindel said. "Pretty soon all of this stuff is going to surface and there's going to be a lot of filings for divorce directly as a result of this."
Ashley Madison marketed itself as the premier venue for cheating spouses before data stolen by hackers started spreading across the Internet earlier this week. The prospect of finding the name of a loved one or an acquaintance amid the site's more than 35 million registered members has drawn strong interest worldwide.
Websites devoted to checking emails against the leaked data appeared to be experiencing heavy traffic. Forums such as Reddit — the user-powered news and discussion site — carried stories of anguished husbands and wives confronting their partners after finding their data among the massive dump of information.
When the hosts of a morning show in Sydney, Australia, asked listeners to phone in if they wanted their spouse's details run through the database, a woman called saying she was suspicious because her husband had been acting strangely since the news of the leak broke. The hosts plugged his details into a website and said they found a match.
"Are you serious? Are you freaking kidding me?" the woman asked, her voice shaking. "These websites are disgusting." She then hung up.
Journalists were also combing through the data, looking for the names of celebrities, politicians or religious leaders. Their task has been complicated by the fact that many of the profiles were tied to fake or borrowed email addresses, which users did not necessarily have to validate.
In Britain, Scottish lawmaker Michelle Thomson said an obsolete email address had been "harvested by hackers" and used to register an account with the site. A similar explanation was offered by Talab Abu Arar, a Bedouin Arab lawmaker in Israel whose parliamentary email address was found amid the dump.
"Someone wanted simply to hurt my good name ... it is very annoying," he told Israel's Army Radio.
Like many Bedouin Arabs, Abu Arar practices polygamy and has a wife and a common-law partner. With two partners, he said, why would he need a website?
"I'm not lacking in women," he said with a chuckle.
---
Kristen Gelineau in Sydney and Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20150820/cheating-website-81f48f6f2d.html
There's more coming out and a lot of government workers seem to be involved...
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20150820/us--cheating_website-229e9627bf.html
"Cheating website subscribers included WH, Congress workers
Aug 20, 4:45 PM (ET)
By JACK GILLUM and TED BRIDIS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds of U.S. government employees — including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies — used Internet connections in their federal offices to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison, The Associated Press has learned.
The AP traced many of the accounts exposed by hackers back to federal workers. They included at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counterterrorism response team.
Few actually paid for their services with their government email accounts. But AP traced their government Internet connections — logged by the website over five years — and reviewed their credit-card transactions to identify them. They included workers at more than two dozen Obama administration agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, Treasury, Transportation and Homeland Security. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.
The AP is not naming the government subscribers it found because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime.
Hackers this week released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website one month after the break-in at Ashley Madison's parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc. The website — whose slogan is, "Life is short. Have an affair" — is marketed to facilitate extra-marital affairs.
Many federal customers appeared to use non-government email addresses with handles such as "sexlessmarriage," "soontobesingle" or "latinlovers." Some Justice Department employees appeared to use pre-paid credit cards to help preserve their anonymity but connected to the service from their office computers.
"I was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing," a Justice Department investigator told the AP. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. "I've worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn't happen," he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was deeply embarrassed and not authorized by the government to speak to reporters using his name.
The AP's analysis also found hundreds of transactions associated with Department of Defense networks, either at the Pentagon or from armed services connections elsewhere.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed the Pentagon was looking into the list of people who used military email addresses. Adultery can be a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
"I'm aware it," Carter said. "Of course it's an issue because conduct is very important. And we expect good conduct on the part of our people. ... The services are looking into it and as well they should be. Absolutely."
The AP's review was the first to reveal that federal workers used their office systems to access the site, based on their Internet Protocol addresses associated with credit card transactions. It focused on searching for government employees in especially sensitive positions who could perhaps become blackmail targets. The government hacker at the Homeland Security Department, who did not respond to phone or email messages, included photographs of his wife and infant son on his Facebook page.
One assistant U.S. attorney declined through a spokesman to speak to the AP, and another did not return phone or email messages.
A White House spokesman said Thursday he could not immediately comment on the matter. The IT administrator in the White House did not return email messages.
Federal policies vary for employees by agency as to whether they would be permitted during work hours to use websites like Ashley Madison, which could fall under the same category as dating websites. But it raises questions about what personal business is acceptable — and what websites are OK to visit — for government workers on taxpayer time, especially employees who could face blackmail.
The Homeland Security Department rules for use of work computers say the devices should be used for only for official purposes, though "limited personal use is authorized as long as this use does not interfere with official duties or cause degradation of network services." Employees are barred from using government computers to access "inappropriate sites" including those that are "obscene, hateful, harmful, malicious, hostile, threatening, abusive, vulgar, defamatory, profane, or racially, sexually, or ethnically objectionable."
The hackers who took credit for the break-in had accused the website's owners of deceit and incompetence, and said the company refused to bow to their demands to close the site. Avid Life released a statement calling the hackers criminals. It added that law enforcement in both the U.S. and Canada is investigating and declined comment beyond its statement Tuesday that it was investigating the hackers' claims."
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20150820/us--cheating_website-229e9627bf.html
"Cheating website subscribers included WH, Congress workers
Aug 20, 4:45 PM (ET)
By JACK GILLUM and TED BRIDIS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds of U.S. government employees — including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies — used Internet connections in their federal offices to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison, The Associated Press has learned.
The AP traced many of the accounts exposed by hackers back to federal workers. They included at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counterterrorism response team.
Few actually paid for their services with their government email accounts. But AP traced their government Internet connections — logged by the website over five years — and reviewed their credit-card transactions to identify them. They included workers at more than two dozen Obama administration agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, Treasury, Transportation and Homeland Security. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.
The AP is not naming the government subscribers it found because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime.
Hackers this week released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website one month after the break-in at Ashley Madison's parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc. The website — whose slogan is, "Life is short. Have an affair" — is marketed to facilitate extra-marital affairs.
Many federal customers appeared to use non-government email addresses with handles such as "sexlessmarriage," "soontobesingle" or "latinlovers." Some Justice Department employees appeared to use pre-paid credit cards to help preserve their anonymity but connected to the service from their office computers.
"I was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing," a Justice Department investigator told the AP. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. "I've worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn't happen," he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was deeply embarrassed and not authorized by the government to speak to reporters using his name.
The AP's analysis also found hundreds of transactions associated with Department of Defense networks, either at the Pentagon or from armed services connections elsewhere.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed the Pentagon was looking into the list of people who used military email addresses. Adultery can be a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
"I'm aware it," Carter said. "Of course it's an issue because conduct is very important. And we expect good conduct on the part of our people. ... The services are looking into it and as well they should be. Absolutely."
The AP's review was the first to reveal that federal workers used their office systems to access the site, based on their Internet Protocol addresses associated with credit card transactions. It focused on searching for government employees in especially sensitive positions who could perhaps become blackmail targets. The government hacker at the Homeland Security Department, who did not respond to phone or email messages, included photographs of his wife and infant son on his Facebook page.
One assistant U.S. attorney declined through a spokesman to speak to the AP, and another did not return phone or email messages.
A White House spokesman said Thursday he could not immediately comment on the matter. The IT administrator in the White House did not return email messages.
Federal policies vary for employees by agency as to whether they would be permitted during work hours to use websites like Ashley Madison, which could fall under the same category as dating websites. But it raises questions about what personal business is acceptable — and what websites are OK to visit — for government workers on taxpayer time, especially employees who could face blackmail.
The Homeland Security Department rules for use of work computers say the devices should be used for only for official purposes, though "limited personal use is authorized as long as this use does not interfere with official duties or cause degradation of network services." Employees are barred from using government computers to access "inappropriate sites" including those that are "obscene, hateful, harmful, malicious, hostile, threatening, abusive, vulgar, defamatory, profane, or racially, sexually, or ethnically objectionable."
The hackers who took credit for the break-in had accused the website's owners of deceit and incompetence, and said the company refused to bow to their demands to close the site. Avid Life released a statement calling the hackers criminals. It added that law enforcement in both the U.S. and Canada is investigating and declined comment beyond its statement Tuesday that it was investigating the hackers' claims."
Well, it's interesting. In this day and age in which things can be tracked electronically so easily, not the smartest way to cheat. Is it really so hard to cheat that a web site and credit card are essential? Don't really get it but I am an old fashioned gal. I know it is a breach of privacy but it is hard for me to muster up much sympathy. Sad that families may be destroyed and lawyers may profit.
Yes I read that AshleyMadison did not verify email address so any one could be used. But there is a way to see if a credit card was used and that would verify if someone was really on this site.
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