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Who know unless you had a profile there. One thing I found interesting was the suggestion from one of the comments that AM might be the ones dumping all the fake databases. If so this is a pretty clever strategy to try and hide a needle in a pile of needles.
Since the consensus is now that the leak is real, we'll change the title to reflect that.
BTW, those "secure" logo are just so useless I see them as sign of weakness rather than confidence. Anyone can place a secure logo or verified logo on their homepage and pretend.
- Confirm that this (or any of the dumps) is the data. This almost definitely opens them up to lawsuits coming from a bunch of people who have little to lose. I say "little to lose" because a non-trivial number will be on the verge of divorce about to lose half of everything.
- Keep their mouths shut and confirm/deny nothing. The press will continue on the story until they're bored and move along but that could be a long time because of the names and information involved.
- Deny that this (or any of the dumps) is the data. All they have to do is keep planting the seed of doubt and some portion of the press will hesitate publishing names because they don't want to look like idiots and/or open themselves up to lawsuits. Because of course anyone with an axe to grind will make sure their opponent (or boss or whatever) is listed in one of the dumps to target them. Further, this shields some of their customers and gives those customers' divorce attorney's a "plausible" scenario to fight against.
All of that said, I wonder if there's some way to validate some of the accounts with the site. If you can do that with some of the leaked data, you may be able to prove that some portion of the data set is real..
Krebs has since updated his post with confirmation from three independent Ashley Madison users confirming their data was in the leak. It looks like this was the real deal.
That's the only way this can go. The company has three options: - Confirm that this (or any of the dumps) is the data. This almost definitely opens them up to lawsuits coming from a bunch of people who have little to lose. I say "little to lose" because a non-trivial number will be on the verge of divorce about to lose half of everything. - Keep their mouths shut and confirm/deny nothing. The press will continue on t…
And we know already that there is a lot of confirmed data in there. At least some of the data is unequivocally true, and the data in this latest release feels very organic.
Wow. Bummer. Illegal. Shameful. And could get painful.
Krebs has since updated his post with confirmation from three independent Ashley Madison users confirming their data was in the leak. It looks like this was the real deal.
Interestingly, the three people say the last digits of their credit card numbers were included in the dump, while the Ashley Madison CTO says they don't keep credit card numbers, full stop.
Having said that, Ashley Madison has approximately zero credibility, so whatever their agents say is open to intense skepticism.