A deep dive into the subscriber data by Annalee Newitz of Gizmodo suggests there were even fewer female subscribers than previously believed – in fact, she could only find evidence that about 12,000 out of 37 million total profiles belonged to “real women who were active users of Ashley Madison.”
The Canadians are suing because Ashley Madison failed to protect the privacy of its users. The suit directly references the service that charged clients an extra fee to completely and permanently delete their information, but clearly did nothing of the sort, since people who paid the fee are included in the client list posted online. This was, not coincidentally, the primary charge leveled by the Impact Team hackers who stole, and ultimately released, the Ashley Madison subscriber database.
The Obama Administration let Chinese hackers walk away with a vast trove of data on government employees and contractors earlier this year, including the entire database of people who applied for security clearances. he last thing we need is for bureaucrats, officials, and military members in sensitive positions to be setting themselves up for manipulation by foreign agents by diddling around on adultery websites such as Ashley Madison.
For all the swinging “progressive” talk about how Ashley Madison could be seen as a positive force, or even an instrument for improving the quality of marriage by helping us get over our sexual hangups – much of that talk emanating from the purveyors of the site, of course – what actually happened when that client list leaked out? Shame. Deep, deep waves of shame, rolling across the globe.
The “Impact Team” hackers who stole client information from adultery website Ashley Madison have made good on their threat to release the information. It reportedly contains over fifteen thousand government and military email addresses.
(Reuters) Police in China said on Tuesday they had arrested about 15,000 people for crimes that “jeopardized Internet security”, as the government moves to tighten controls on the Internet.
Once again, the Internal Revenue Service is reporting that a data breach has landed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers in the hands of hackers. This time, the tax agency is admitting that the info of some 220,000 taxpayers was lost.
Every government hacking story seems to include subsequent revelations that the problem is at least twice as bad as the authorities originally admitted.
ISIS social media accounts are buzzing with a spreadsheet of personal data on employees of the American, British, and Australian governments, including military personnel. The Islamic State claims this list was compiled using data stolen from government systems by its “hacking division,” although some experts who have reviewed the list say most of it was more likely created using simple Google searches of publicly available data. There are about 1,400 individuals included on the list.
The Obama crew’s transcendent belief in the power and wisdom of government, which they think should be micro-managing every American business and personal life, is matched only by the staggering incompetence of the hugely expensive government they administer. Now we get this preposterous Secretary of State Kerry glibly assuring us that he writes his mail on the assumption that it will all be stolen as soon as he clicks Send. Not even the Carter years ended with expectations lowered so much.
A man claiming to be a member of the Anonymous hactivist group is in jail in Waco after allegedly making threats to kill McLennan County and Waco police officers. Just days before this altercation, the self-described Sandra Bland activisit called a Texas trooper “You tyrannical f**king pig.”
INTERPOL’s recent Dark Net training session in Singapore provides an interesting glimpse of just how widespread cyber crime has become, and how resourceful the new generation of criminals and terrorists are.
United Airlines has announced a penetration of its computer security in May and June, with investigators saying it was most likely the same Chinese squad that carried out the “cyber Pearl Harbor” attack on the Office of Personnel Management, along with an operation against health insurance company Anthem. It appears the Chinese raiders made off with a sizable amount of flight information, including passenger lists, from United.
Hackers from the amorphous cyber-crime collective Anonymous claim to have leaked the data from 4,200 United States Census Bureau files.
The hackers accessed Planned Parenthood’s website databases and the names and email addresses of its employees Sunday night.
An ongoing investigation into the security of Chrysler vehicles bears some pretty startling conclusions. In a couple of weeks, security researchers will reveal the details of a zero-day exploit that affects some 471,000 cars. Put bluntly: Hackers can take complete control of the cars from thousands of miles away.
AshleyMadison is a website catering to married people who wish to have an affair. They claim to have 37 million users, and now all of their personal data is in the hands of a hacker group called The Impact Team, which is threatening to expose all those users unless AshleyMadison and a sister site called EstablishedMen are taken down.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has revealed that hackers stole personal information on 25.7 million Americans. That information included Social Security numbers, financial histories, mental health records, and in over a million cases, fingerprints.
Just for a moment, let us indulge McLaughlin and Clift and suppose Hillary Clinton, contrary to all available evidence and testimony, really did set up a private server because she thought the State Department system she was required to use was dangerously vulnerable. What does that tell us about Big Government and its high priestess? The Democrats who saddled us with a gigantic burden of taxes, deficit spending, and regulations don’t trust the multi-trillion-dollar government they’ve built.
As always, the breach was hushed up, and its full extent is still either unknown or being kept from the public, including potential primary and secondary identity theft victims. (When personnel files are raided, the friends and family of the targets have reason to be nervous that they might be the next targets.)
It’s amazing to watch the hapless Obama foreign policy team underplay Cyber Pearl Harbor — the massive Chinese attack on vital U.S. government systems that has put up to 18 million current and former federal employees, plus their friends and families, at risk of identity theft, and dealt damage to American human intelligence efforts that will take years to repair.
FireEye, a private sector cybersecurity firm, told media that they believe they have discovered who was behind the massive hack on the federal Office of Personnel Management in which millions of federal employees’s data was stolen.
Almost 1,500 passengers scheduled to fly with Polish state-owned airline LOT had their flights canceled after unknown hackers attacked the airline’s computers.
Not only has the American human intelligence system been disastrously compromised around the world, but back here at home, the intel community is going to be playing defense for years to come, worried sick about how many government employees with security clearances might have been approached for recruitment or blackmail by China and its allies.
The bombshells just keep coming in the Office of Personnel Management’s hack, which is bidding to eclipse Obamacare’s launch as the most stunning example of Big Government incompetence in the Information Age. The latest bad news is that Chinese hackers had a full year to rummage around inside the OPM’s security clearance system–plenty of time to take just about anything they wanted.
