This is pretty poor journalism. Reminds me of the reddit Boston bombing witchhunt. Note that in the comments, Krebs had to be "reminded" to reach out to Thadeus Zu for comment.
He was being reminded to post about reaching out.
Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
111–120 of 308 posts
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it absolutely is always unethical. Who are you, or anyone else, to question or evaluate "commitment" in a relationship that you have no part of, and know nothing about? Or to force someone's personal private life out in the open where it will be used to judge them without context? Nothing is as black and white as you are claiming it to be.
Privacy isn't a natural right, just like lying to someone via marriage isn't universally considered unethical. Your right to privacy isn't naturally guaranteed, and is only granted by some mutually agreed upon rules in the form of privacy laws. But if I know some fact about you, what gives you any right to say I can't reveal that information? Wouldn't you be limiting my speech? If you argue that lying in marriage is…
[deleted]
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then that's a breach of contract between two private parties which is of absolutely no relevance to outside observers. It is the married couple's prerogative to undergo court procedure if they so desire. Being on AM wouldn't solely have been about breaking commitment. From what I recall, it became an inadvertent hub for gay dating due to its extraordinary gender/sex imbalance. AM's entire business practice was about…
Having morals also means speaking out about things when it is your concern. 37 Million (of course potentially non-unique) accounts on a website advertised with the express intent of cheating on your spouse with nobody knowing is fucked up. It's a sleazy website run by sleazy people with sleazy business practices, used by people who are trying to do something which their spouse VERY LIKELY disagrees with. Of course th…
It exposes what is already human nature. Okay, it was a potential enabler... you have a fair point. But it having a large male populous turns out to be a popular gay hub. The people on this site were going to cheat anyway.
I don't disagree with it being run by sleazy people with sleazy business practices. From everything I've read, I'd concur with this statement.
An epidemic of cheating over the internet is no more a concern than the "epidemic" of cheating. The internet was just a means to an end... just like party lines, dating services, the bar, the office and everywhere else people of our species comingle without their partners. Cheating is no more an epidemic now than it ever was. People just changed media. Perhaps if it's truly the epidemic you suggest, then instead of that being a concern to people who intend to get married, we as a species need to re-evaluate if monogamy is actually human nature or if it's just wishful thinking impressed upon us by the dogma of our upbringing.
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not familiar with Twitter, but if you can easily get all or most handles through their API or scraping then wouldn't it be easy to brute-force reverse the hash? Edit: Maybe add a private salt? Edit again: Oh, missed that "The Twitter handle Brian Krebs..." is effectively the private salt, nevermind.
Probably one should do something similar to this: echo "The Twitter handle Brian Krebs anonymized in this blog post is @user and this a random salt qF7KKAUxtrEtQbnj4LPkUZM4." | sha256sum
The inclusion of a salt only protects against precomputed hashes. It makes almost no difference to how many millions of hashes one can perform per second.
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
The intent when you register on a website designed for cheating on your spouse seems pretty clear to me. If you found your spouse registering for AM would you assume that it was just to see if they had a sleek UI? Hook-up culture has always existed as well, but let's not pretend that Tinder hasn't changed the pace/availability of hooking up. In the same light, let's not pretend that the anonymity of the internet hasn…
In the same light, let's not pretend that the anonymity of the internet hasn't facilitated people comitting adultery. In the same light, let's not pretend that the anonymity of the Internet hasn't facilitated people engaging in terrorist activity and drug trade. When do we build the firewall, captain?
So you're going to let my intent argument stand?
We build the firewall around prosocial behavior. I think that if the names of all of the coke dealers selling their wares through TSR came out today I would not be upset either, because it's a scummy, exploitative industry. If you're breaking a social contract, my expectation of other people upholding their social contracts with you, in that area, are very slim.
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Privacy isn't a natural right, just like lying to someone via marriage isn't universally considered unethical. Your right to privacy isn't naturally guaranteed, and is only granted by some mutually agreed upon rules in the form of privacy laws. But if I know some fact about you, what gives you any right to say I can't reveal that information? Wouldn't you be limiting my speech? If you argue that lying in marriage is…
One could argue privacy is a more natural right than, for example, property rights since strong encryption can give you absolute privacy, even against the state.
Ease of technical implementations does not a natural right make.
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's art imitating life. Old school warez, demoscene and hacker groups have always had a very "campy" countercultural aesthetic to them. Hackers the film doesn't hold a candle to the real-life cDc. These types of groups are a dying breed, though.
cDc == cult of the dead cow? I haven't seen them referenced in ages. Probably since my own arrest actually.
You don't leave that one hanging. What's the story? Care to share?
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Privacy isn't a natural right, just like lying to someone via marriage isn't universally considered unethical. Your right to privacy isn't naturally guaranteed, and is only granted by some mutually agreed upon rules in the form of privacy laws. But if I know some fact about you, what gives you any right to say I can't reveal that information? Wouldn't you be limiting my speech? If you argue that lying in marriage is…
One could argue privacy is a more natural right than, for example, property rights since strong encryption can give you absolute privacy, even against the state.
I think you and I have different ideas of what absolute means.
Encryption protects infromation as long as A) the computation power, time and desire available to break your encryption does not exceed the level you encrypted, B) the underlying math principles on which the encryption was based do not see a change in some manner reducing the effectiveness of the algorithm for this task, or C) The implementation of the encryption algorithm did not suffer some flaw reducing it's effectiveness to the level if can be beaten.
I know A and C have happened in the past. I'm unsure whether B has occurred. It's worth noting that in the case of B or C, the strength you choose now may not have any effect on the outcome.
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having morals means knowing when to stay out of things that are none of your concern That's fundamental to your moral framework. It may even be fundamental to the moral norms in US or Western culture. But it's not fundamental to everybody's. It's by no means objective. That's why we have objective laws to go by. Talking about morals means realizing everyone has different morals. Of what use is it to argue whether che…
That's why we have objective laws to go by. Which as far as I know were violated.
Right! Glad we could all find common ground.
Re: Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having morals also means speaking out about things when it is your concern. 37 Million (of course potentially non-unique) accounts on a website advertised with the express intent of cheating on your spouse with nobody knowing is fucked up. It's a sleazy website run by sleazy people with sleazy business practices, used by people who are trying to do something which their spouse VERY LIKELY disagrees with. Of course th…
It exposes what is already human nature. Okay, it was a potential enabler... you have a fair point. But it having a large male populous turns out to be a popular gay hub. The people on this site were going to cheat anyway. I don't disagree with it being run by sleazy people with sleazy business practices. From everything I've read, I'd concur with this statement. An epidemic of cheating over the internet is no more a…
I find the prospect of people making promises to people that we can assume that they love and being unable to keep those promises to be terrifying. If I believed that we weren't able to control our behavior and we were overrun with animalistic desire, I would kill myself. The same ideology is used to justify violence, rape, etc., and if I did not believe that these problems could be addressed or improved upon, I personally do not think life would be worth living.