CHEATERS FEAR; PARTNERS CHEER

Site’s hackers claim 37m personal records have been stolen from notorious dating site, with Cougar Life and Established Men also compromised

The Ashley Madison website. Photograph: Screengrab

by Alex Hern

Hackers have stolen and leaked personal information from online cheating site Ashley Madison, an international dating site with the tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair.”

The site, which encourages married users to cheat on their spouses and advertises 37 million members, had its data hacked by a group calling itself the Impact Team. At least two other dating sites, Cougar Life and Established Men, also owned by the same parent group, Avid Life Media, have had their data compromised.

The Impact Team claims to have complete access to the company’s database, including not only user records for every single member, but also the financial records of ALM and other proprietary information. For now, the group has released just 40MB of data, including credit card details and several ALM documents.

According to the information security journalist Brian Krebs, who broke the news, ALM has confirmed that the hacked material is genuine, and the company is working to remove from the net the material that has already been posted. But the initial leak is just a taster, according to the Impact Team, which accompanied the data with a manifesto threatening release of further information if Ashley Madison and Established Men are not permanently closed.

“Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails. The other websites may stay online,” the group’s statement reads.

The hackers’ main point of contention is with the fact that Ashley Madison charges users a fee of £15 to carry out a “full delete” of their information if they decide to leave the site. Although users have the option of permanently hiding their profile free of charge, the company’s advertisements claim that the full delete service is the only way to completely remove their information from the servers.
But the hackers say that that claim is “a complete lie”.

“Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed,” they allege.

ALM believes it has identified the perpetrator of the hack, which it says was likely an inside job. “We’re on the doorstep of [confirming] who we believe is the culprit, and unfortunately that may have triggered this mass publication,” the company’s chief executive, Noel Biderman, told Krebs. “I’ve got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials. It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services.”

The data dump seems to back-up that theory to a certain extent, specifically apologising to the company’s director of security. “You did everything you could, but nothing you could have done could have stopped this,” the manifesto reads.

In a statement, ALM said: “We apologise for this unprovoked and criminal intrusion into our customers’ information. The current business world has proven to be one in which no company’s online assets are safe from cyber-vandalism, with Avid Life Media being only the latest among many companies to have been attacked, despite investing in the latest privacy and security technologies.

“At this time, we have been able to secure our sites, and close the unauthorised access points. We are working with law enforcement agencies, which are investigating this criminal act. Any and all parties responsible for this act of cyber–terrorism will be held responsible.”

Ashley Madison, along with a number of other dating sites, had already been criticised for the lack of care taken over customer information at least once before. In 2012, the online rights campaign group EFF examined eight popular dating sites, and found that just one, Zoosk, carried out simple security precautions such as enabling encrypted connections by default. In the EFF’s study, however, Ashley Madison was explicitly praised for deleting data after users closed their account.

ALM later said it had used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) to demand the removal of online posts about the incident “as well as all personally identifiable information about our users published online.”

Posts on Twitter which had apparently earlier linked to pages containing hacked material were now bringing up “page not found” results, the Guardian found.

ALM also said it is now offering its full-delete option free to any customer to help them protect their privacy.

original article here

PETRAEUS: Proble of Mistress' Cyberharassment Uncovered the Affair

The affair that brought an end to David Petraeus' tenure as CIA director came to light during an FBI investigation into a complaint that his biographer Paula Broadwell was sending harassing e-mails to another woman close to him, a U.S. official said Saturday.

During the investigation, other communications surfaced between Petraeus and Broadwell, a married mother of two, according to the official.

The official did not identify the woman who made the initial complaint and did not know the nature of her relationship with Petraeus.

The FBI interviewed Petraeus in the course of its inquiry, said the official, who stressed that the CIA director was never the target of the investigation and his communications were never compromised. The official did not know whether Broadwell was interviewed.

The official did not have an exact timeframe for the investigation and could not say if it is still ongoing.

CNN has not been able to reach Broadwell for comment.

The Obama administration first learned of the affair in a phone call from the FBI to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at 5 p.m. on election night, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.

On Saturday, questions arose about why congressional leaders were not informed of the investigation immediately.

According to a congressional aide familiar with the matter, the House and Senate intelligence committees weren't informed that there was an FBI investigation into the situation until Friday.

"The committees are required to be kept informed of significant intelligence activities," the aide said Saturday. "If there was an official investigation that was looking, at least in part, at information that was compromising the CIA director, then I think there's a solid argument to say that the committee leadership should have been notified to at least some level of detail."

The resignation also comes days before Petraeus was slated to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee about the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The attack, in which four Americans were killed, became a point of contention during the presidential campaign.

Some have even suggested that the timing of Petraeus' stepping down is suspect, given the expected grilling in Congress. Acting CIA Director Michael Morell will testify instead.

"Director Petraeus' frank and forthright letter of resignation stands on its own," said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. "Any suggestion that his departure has anything to do with criticism about Benghazi is completely baseless."

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King, R-New York, who is also a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, insisted that Petraeus should not back out of plans to testify.

King, a vocal critic of the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi attack, said on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" that Petraeus is "an absolutely essential witness, maybe more than anybody else."

"David Petraeus' testifying has nothing to do with whether or not he's still the CIA director, and I don't see how the CIA can say he's not going to testify," King said.

"I think his testimony is certainly valuable, it's certainly necessary," King continued. "He was at the center of this, and he has answers that only he has."

If Petraeus does not testify as originally scheduled on Thursday, King said, "It should be very soon after that."

Broadwell spent a year with Petraeus in Afghanistan interviewing him for the book she co-wrote, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."

Petraeus' departure Friday appeared to be an abrupt end to a spectacularly successful career in public service.

"After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours," Petraeus said in a letter to colleagues, explaining his decision to step down.

"Teddy Roosevelt once observed that life's greatest gift is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing. I will always treasure my opportunity to have done that with you and I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end," he said.

Petraeus, 60, had a distinguished 37-year career in the military before joining the CIA, helping turn the tide against insurgents while commanding forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earning praise from both sides of the political aisle, the retired four-star general took the helm of the CIA in September 2011.

Petraeus met with Obama on Thursday to offer his resignation and explain the circumstances behind it, according to a senior administration official. The president accepted Petraeus' resignation during a phone call Friday, the official said.

"By any measure, he was one of the outstanding general officers of his generation, helping our military adapt to new challenges and leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end," Obama said in a statement.

"As director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he has continued to serve with characteristic intellectual rigor, dedication and patriotism."

Petraeus assumed command of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan in July 2010, after serving for more than 20 months as commander of U.S. Central Command. He previously commanded multinational forces in Iraq, leading the so-called surge.

The general literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency techniques by overseeing development of the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual.

Before his nomination as CIA director, Petraeus was considered the nation's most well-known and popular military leader since Colin Powell.

Petraeus and his wife, Holly, live in Virginia. They have two grown children.

original article found here

Remember, if or when you defame and cyberharass others - it often reveals more about you than your target.  EOPC