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Ashley Madison: The Internet’s Greatest COINTEL PRO Honey Pot?
21st Century Wire says…
Finally, the real reason why professional hackers have lifted the data of 37 million users from the fashionable ‘infidelity’ website Ashley Madison.
Anyone employed by the state who was stupid enough to join this site should by now realize that this whole hacking affair was a staged exercise in mass entrapment, and blackmail. The media are making a big deal about how this hack is somehow a “goldmine” for cyber criminals, but do not dare mention what this kind of information could do in the hands of the deep state via covert agencies like the NSA, the FBI or the CIA, Canada’s CSIS, or overseas spook houses like Britain’s MI5, or Israel’s Mossad.
Much has been made of the not-so-bright conclave of 15,000 US gov’t and military personnel with .gov and .mil addresses – all of whom who were using the website to facilitate their extramarital flings, but the pool of suckers is not limited to American shores. AP reports:
“Although many may have signed up out of curiosity and some have little more to fear than embarrassment, the consequences for others could reverberate beyond their marriages. The French leak monitoring firm CybelAngel said it counted 1,200 email addresses in the data dump with the .sa suffix, suggesting users were connected to Saudi Arabia, where adultery is punishable by death.”
According to the Telegraph, UK gov’t and Defense Dept. staff were particularly badly hit in the data dump:
“According to the website Political Scrapbook, there are 92 Ministry of Defence email addresses among the leaked details. The website has found 1,716 email addresses from universities and further education colleges, using the .ac.uk suffix; 124 using .gov.uk; 92 using .mod.uk; 65 local education authorities and schools using .sch.uk; 56 National Heath Service emails and less than 50 police emails (.police.uk)”
“Michelle Thomson, one of the SNP’s newly-elected Westminster MPs, has said one of her email addresses is among the leaked data dumped online by hackers. The married MP said someone had stolen her email address and used it without her knowledge.”
Of course, the really big winner in this scandal, as with most things – are the lawyers. Elizabeth Hicks, partner at British divorce law firm Irwin Mitchell, must be chuffed about the potential for future business:
“With 1.2m Britons apparently affected by the data leak, 95 per cent of whom are reportedly male, there will no doubt be a few nervous husbands sat round the dinner table tonight.”
It’s also a potential disaster for the website’s closet gay users. Business Insider adds here:
“Avid Life is based in Toronto, but, as its site boasts, it has “over 40 million members worldwide.” Many of these members live in countries where adultery or homosexuality are illegal, and often with very serious punishments. One Reddit user says that he lives in Saudi Arabia, but used Ashley Madison while studying in the US to “keep my [gay] hookups extremely discreet,” and that he “only used AM to hook up with single guys.” He says he has since been forced to flee the country.”
This this just goes to show what a true ‘honey pot’ these type of “vice” websites really are…
IMAGE: ‘OOPS.’
ABC/Associated Press
Hackers say they have exposed unfaithful partners across the world, posting what they said were the personal details of millions of people registered with cheating website Ashley Madison.
A message posted by the hackers alongside their massive trove accused Ashley Madison’s owners of deceit and incompetence and said the company had refused to bow to their demands to close the site.
“Now everyone gets to see their data,” the statement said.
Ashley Madison has long courted attention with its claim to be the Internet’s leading facilitator of extramarital liaisons, boasting of having nearly 39 million members and that “thousands of cheating wives and cheating husbands sign up every day looking for an affair.”
Its owner, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc., has previously acknowledged suffering an electronic break-in and said in a statement Tuesday it was investigating the hackers’ claim. U.S. and Canadian law enforcement are involved in the probe, the company said.
The Associated Press wasn’t immediately able to determine the authenticity of the leaked files, although many analysts who have scanned the data believe it is genuine.
TrustedSec Chief Executive Dave Kennedy said the information dump included full names, passwords, street addresses, credit card information and “an extensive amount of internal data.” In a separate blog, Errata Security Chief Executive Rob Graham said the information released included details such as users’ height, weight and GPS coordinates. He said men outnumbered women on the service five-to-one.
Avid Life Media declined to comment Wednesday beyond its statement. The hackers also didn’t immediately return emails.
The prospect of millions of adulterous partners being publicly shamed drew widespread attention but the sheer size of the database — and the technical savvy needed to navigate it — means it’s unlikely to lead to an immediate rush to divorce courts.
“Unless this Ashley Madison information becomes very easily accessible and searchable, I think it is unlikely that anyone but the most paranoid or suspecting spouses will bother to seek out this information,” New York divorce attorney Michael DiFalco said in an email. “There are much simpler ways to confirm their suspicions.”
Although Graham and others said many of the Ashley Madison profiles appeared to be bogus, it’s clear the leak was huge. Troy Hunt, who runs a website that warns people when their private information is exposed online, said nearly 5,000 users had received alerts stemming from the breach…
See original report here at ABC News
READ MORE NSA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire NSA Files
