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A popular fetish app stored passwords in plain text
"Pursuant to our records, we have not identified an account associated with [your email address]. In order to enable us to exercise your request to receive access to your personal data, we kindly request the below information (please respond with the below to this email): · The email address you registered with on Whiplr; · Your username on Whiplr; · Your password on Whiplr."
After Math: This is a witch hunt
It was a dangerous week for some of the biggest names in technology as they they were forced to face off against these new things called "consequences" which have come about due to their ongoing "actions." It's all so very unfair. Ashley Madison is still super duper sorry about the whole exposing of America's least competent infidelitors thing, Reddit is saying "sayonara" to bitcoin (but not its resident racists), and the government of Ecuador went and changed up the Wi-Fi password on poor Julian Assange. But hey, at least Zuck won't be out of a job anytime soon. Numbers, because how else will we know whether she'll sink or float?
Ashley Madison attempts to regain the public’s trust
Ashley Madison, the website for "married dating", wants the public to know that it's changed its ways. It's been a little under three years since the dating service for extra-marital affairs was hacked by a group calling itself the Impact Team, exposing the personal data and billing information of over 30 million customers -- including users who spent $19 on a "paid delete" option for their accounts.
Ashley Madison will pay $11.2 million to data breach victims
Ashley Madison is still picking up the pieces two years after the massive data breach that exposed millions of users' information. The parent company of the cheat-on-your-spouse website continues to deny any wrongdoing, but it has agreed to settle the preliminary class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of 37 million users whose personal details were dumped onto the dark web. Ruby Corp is ready to pay $11.2 million for the settlement, though the amount still has to be approved by a federal judge in St. Louis.
Ashley Madison settles charges over its massive data breach
Ashley Madison is paying the price for the hack that exposed the info of 36 million customers, and we don't just mean through executive departures. The owners of the cheat-on-your-spouse site, Ruby Corp, have settled charges from both the US Federal Trade Commission and 13 states alleging that it both misled users and didn't do enough to protect their info. The actual fine is small -- Ashley Madison was intended to pay a total of $17.5 million, but can only afford to pay just over $1.6 million. However, the reforms may go a long way toward solving some of the underlying problems that led to both the breach and shady business practices.
Ashley Madison gives infidelity a new look
Trust is one of the few commodities that you can't get more of by spending money and you can't regain it once it's been lost. When a relationship loses that fundamental belief in each other's reliability then there's almost nothing you can do to save it. Speaking of which, Ashley Madison is back and has launched a new ad campaign to convince people that it's capable of guarding your email addresses and credit card numbers. The site has undergone a glossy rebrand, with parent company Avid Life Media being renamed as Ruby to make it appear more feminine. The one thing that didn't survive the changes was the website's eye-catching tagline: "life is short, have an affair."
2015's big hacks, attacks and security blunders
The security breaches, blunders, and disasters of 2015 tanked our trust in health insurance providers, credit agencies, the IRS, car manufacturers, connected toys for kids, and even "adult" dating sites. These stories shaped 2015, and forever changed the way we see data privacy and security. Most importantly, these painful moments in computer security affected millions, shaped government policy and validated our paranoia.
Former Ashley Madison CTO sues security researcher over hacked emails
While it appears the hackers who stole a treasure trove of data from adultery-focused "dating" site Ashley Madison are done embarrassing the company, that doesn't mean the fallout from the attack has stopped. The latest drama involves noted security researcher Brian Krebbs, who says he's facing a libel lawsuit from former Ashley Madison CTO Raja Bhatia. The lawsuit stems from a report Krebs posted in late August in which he claimed that the leaked emails of now-former CEO Noel Biderman revealed a plot to hack Ashley Madison's competitors. Bhatia apparently took issue with a number of Krebs' claims in the article and asked for a retraction and correction, which thus far Krebs has been unwilling to do.
Ashley Madison insists that real women use its affair service
That Gizmodo investigation of leaked data suggesting that most of the women on Ashley Madison's affair-seeking service were fake? Completely bogus... if you ask Ashley Madison. It claims that there are plenty of real live women on the site -- the ratio of paying men to active women (who get to use it for free) is reportedly 1.2 to 1, and women sent 2.8 million messages just in the past week. Gizmodo made "incorrect assumptions" about what some of the data fields meant, Ashley Madison says. Whether or not that's true, you'll want to keep the data in context. The service isn't outlining the ratio of real to fake women, so it's not clear whether real women are bountiful or needles in the proverbial haystack.
Ashley Madison boss steps down following hack
Noel Biderman, the CEO of Avid Life Media, the company behind the extra-marital dating site Ashley Madison, is stepping down from his position "in mutual agreement with the company." In a statement released today, Avid says the change "is in the best interest of the company." The decision comes after the site was hacked, revealing the identity of millions of potentially infidelious members.
Leaked data shows women on Ashley Madison were mostly fake
It's no secret that Ashley Madison has fake female profiles to engage users -- heck, it's even noted in the ToS that the website "is geared to provide you with amusement and entertainment." When its user data was leaked to the public, though, people got a chance to see just how many women there are on the website exactly, and how many of them are definitely fake. Gizmodo editor-in-chief Annalee Newitz took a closer look at the data dump in an effort to determine the site's female population and found that barely any of the 5.5 million profiles marked as "female" actually used the website.
Ashley Madison offers $376,000 bounty to help find hackers
The Impact Life hackers might not release any more data they stole from adultery-enabling site Ashley Madison, but the legal investigation into who exactly is responsible for the security breach is just getting started. As reported by The Independent, Ashely Madison's parent company Avid Life Media (ALM) is offering a $500,000 (in Canadian dollars, about $376,000 US as of this writing) reward for any information leading to "identification, arrest and prosecution" of those responsible for the hack. It's the first major step that ALM is making to find out what happened to its data, and it's also a very public confirmation that the data Impact Life stole is legit. High-profile security researchers had said as much in the days immediately following the hack, but the initial statement from Ashley Madison was a bit less concrete.
Recommended Reading: The Ashley Madison hack should scare you
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. The Ashley Madison Hack Should Scare You, Too by Heather Havrilesky New York Magazine Reactions about cheaters getting what they deserve aside, the Ashley Madison hack and subsequent release of private info is reason for concern. The masses are flocking to the internet to sift through the details, digging for dirt on recognizable names. But what happens when another service housing sensitive, private info is hacked and the stolen goods are posted online for the world to view -- not necessarily one focused on adultery? "At the exact moment when citizens worldwide should be noticing that we're all living in glass houses, many of us are picking up stones instead," says New York Magazine's Heather Havrilesky.
ICYMI: Gameroulette, 3D-glass printing and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-356435{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-356435, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-356435{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-356435").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: An MIT group built a 3D printer that extrudes glass rather than plastic; they believe the technology could be used to make cheaper fiber optic cables. Chatroulette users were treated to a surprise live first-person shooter game that pitted them against creepy zombies. The rest of us totally missed out. A new tech-enabled bartending buddy would sync with its smartphone app and walk you through making the perfect cocktail: All for $39.
Ashley Madison hackers bash the site's security practices in Q&A
Impact Team, the hackers that stole a massive amount of data from infidelity hookup site Ashley Madison earlier this week, have come forward to tell their side of the story. In an email Q&A with Motherboard, the hack's perpetrators first and foremost shamed Ashley Madison's parent company Avid Life Media for the lax security that made such a hack a surprisingly simple matter. "We worked hard to make fully undetectable attack [sic]," Impact Team said, "then got in and found nothing to bypass." The hackers further called the security levels "bad," saying that "nobody was watching" and there was "no security" to speak of. The fact that Ashley Madison isn't the most secure site out there isn't news, but it's still a bit shocking to see just how cavalier a site that makes its living trading on infidelity is about protecting customer info.
The latest Ashley Madison data release is twice as big as the first
It looks like the Ashley Madison hackers aren't done releasing data they pilfered from the company in July. As reported by Motherboard, another set of data has been posted on the same "Dark Web" site that hosted the original release. The data dump is accompanied by a statement that reads "Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now" -- a reference to Avid Life (Ashley Madison's parent company) CEO Noel Biderman. The release also includes the same PGP key that was used by the Impact Team hackers when they released the first round of data.
Ashley Madison leaked data is now searchable (but don't)
If you just returned from an isolated island vacation (or perhaps you live under a particularly sweet and naïve rock structure), you may not have heard that notorious "dating service" Ashley Madison was hacked. The controversial site is billed as a social network and dating service for married people looking for extramarital affairs. The hacked data has been publicly released, and services that search for the email addresses used on Ashley Madison's site immediately began to populate the web.
Hackers dump stolen Ashley Madison data onto the Dark Web
Impact Team, the hacking collective that recently made headlines by absconding with the personal data of some 37 million customers, has made good on previous threats to release the information. On Tuesday, the group dumped 9.7 GB worth of data onto the Dark Web, a semi-anonymized corner of the Internet only accessible using a special Tor browser and Onion router. The data set appears to include account details and log-ins as well as credit card and payment transaction details. The hackers reportedly pulled the data from Ashley Madison's servers despite the company offering a $19 "Full Delete" service that supposedly scrubbed former users' data from the site.
Ashley Madison hack threatens to expose millions of users
Ashley Madison, the dating website that purports to connect people looking for an affair, has been the victim of a hack that has exposed the personal data of its 37 million users. Krebs on Security is reporting that the perpetrators are a hacker or hackers going by the name of Impact Team. So far, only a small selection of information has been uploaded, but the group is threatening to post the entire haul unless Ashley Madison and sister site Established Men are shut down for good. CEO Noel Biderman has confirmed that the attack is legitimate and has pledged to take down compromising files as they're found online. Not that it's likely to be much comfort to the people waking up to find their personal details splashed across the internet.
Ashley Madison IPO proves Adultery is big business
It may sound like a high-end department store, but Ashley Madison is actually a hookup network for people who want some extra-marital, no-strings attached sex. As much as we pretend that the site caters to a small niche, the truth is that its parent company is struggling to keep up with the demand. That's why it's reportedly preparing to go public in the hope of raising $200 million to fund international expansion.
