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The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

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Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#301

Post by erroneousfunk »

dsacco wrote: post #4
tptacek wrote: post #2

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had tr…

This is a great comment, Thomas. I had an argument with my girlfriend about this. No matter what reasoning I used, no matter what I said, she could not agree that it was wrong that Ashley Madison (A.M.) was hacked. Her position was that marital infidelity is such a pubishable offense that the participants on A.M. deserve to be publicly outed. In her view, it was not even up for debate. She felt so powerfully about in…

What about those who were on the site with the consent of their partner (swingers, poly, etc)? People who were single and on the site looking for a short-term fling? People just there out of curiosity, or signed up impulsively one night and deleted ("deleted") their account the next day? I would guess the number of married people who signed up, contacted someone, and had an affair through the site are actually in the minority (given the typical funnels for this sort of site, and all the hidden fees involved)

There are going to be a lot of very embarrassed people who committed no adultery.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#302

Post by 51Cards »

akshatpradhan wrote: post #280
icanhackit wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The true intent: "In a long manifesto posted alongside the stolen ALM data, The Impact Team said it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee." So to show the people who use ALM's services that ALM lies about their policies, the users need to be exposed? Well it's an effective st…

>But I can't shake the feeling there's a hidden fuck-you in there somewhere to the people they're outing. That's not what Thomas is saying. He's literally saying that the main intent of why Impact Team released the 10GB database is because they felt users are guilty of the crime of marriage infidelity. His statement is counter to what Impact Team specifically said, "publish the information in response to alleged lies…

I have to disagree here strongly. The statements published by Impact Team are heavily laced with vitriol towards the users of the service. I feel their statement about exposing ALM is just a loose attempt at claiming virtue around their act. I am quite sure it was not in any way the prime motivator.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#303

Post by hlfw0rd »

Strange, I would expect hackers to be the first to reject the silly social construct of monogamy.

I think this is ridiculous and nearly pointless. The only benefit I see is exposing how carelessly ALM handled personal data. However, they could have accomplished this while still blinding the data.

Edit: Not sure why this warrants downvotes..

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#304

Post by xxs »

dagw wrote: post #143
xxs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding the salt increases (albeit linearly) complexity of hashing w/ regard to brute forcing. So using a very long salt reduces hash speeds.

There are much better ways of reducing hash speed. Like hashing N times.

I am not discussing it, however:

>>It doesn’t affect how fast an attacker can try a candidate password, given the hash and the salt from your database

simply, it's a false statement. Multiple hashes while adding the same (huge) salt each time decreases the speed even further. Just adding 8MB (larger than L2 cache or any reasonable amount of SRAM to mount) of salt might be better than multiple hashings as well, plus it increases difficulty of mass-parallel processing. Multiple hashes are very L1 cache friendly when the input is tiny.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#305

Post by robertfw »

RyanZAG wrote: post #243
nicolas_t wrote: post #217

What is worrying about this is that some people are in real physical danger because of this leak. It probably seemed like fun and "social justice" for the hackers but it's not. There are people who live in countries where adultery is punishable by death. Likewise for being gay. There's already one person from Saudi Arabia who expressed his concerns on Reddit but there's likely to be a lot of other people affected. An…

What is more worrying for me is that people in real physical danger would hand over that kind of information in the first place. There's very little stopping an employee at a company from selling this information to governments in these countries, or employees originating from these countries being forced to divulge the information. The real issue is that this information was freely given up in the first place. Hacks…

People living their lives as they want, in spite of the threat of violence, has long been the vanguard of social change.

Forcing them further underground is never a good thing in the long run

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#306

Post by RodericDay »

SonicSoul wrote: post #298
aaron695 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had trouble believing it was a real thing Reddit AMA - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3dy732/i_worked_at_as... "We had one guy I'll always remember. His wife was in an accident and stuck in a wheelchair, unable to do anything. She forced him to join the site and encouraged him to find a woman he could have sex with. He ended up finding partners that would last…

since she gave consent I don't believe this is cheating. In fact he could go on any dating site and check off "married" or "open marriage" status wherever available.

If you actually go to that AMA and read through, multiple people call out the multiple ways in which it looks like a PR stunt.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#307

Post by panzagl »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #207
zamalek wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I should have prefaced that whole argument with "advanced societies." It's very hard to argue these points when you have e.g. the middle east getting in the way of rational and humane thought processes. In places like that you really have no choice or autonomy and arguments such as my original one simply hold no ground.

The middle east was an advanced society up until recently, definitely better off than Europe & co was during the middle ages in terms of scientific and mathematics and whatnot. Can we just call it "different"?

The middle east squatted on the remains of the roman/greek culture they destroyed, claiming civilization because they played with the few shiny things left.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#308

Post by panzagl »

tptacek wrote: post #2

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had tr…

From watching friends deal with divorce, adultery isn't even illegal/prosecuted/considered in distribution of assets, at least in practice. At best this is a mass-outing of people who suck at monogamy.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#309

Post by mikeash »

tptacek wrote: post #2

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had tr…

"and come on, 98% of the people talking about this on Twitter barely recognize that [marital infidelity] as ethically problematic in the first place"

What makes you say that? In my experience it is extremely rare to find anybody who thinks cheating on a partner is ethical, and I see no reason to think this particular group is any different. This is one of those things that most people feel very strongly about, and almost always in the same direction.

And that's exactly why the reaction is so gleeful. The people who use this site are perceived as scumbags, precisely because cheating is considered to be a grave moral (if not legal) crime. Outing them is considered justice. The idea that some of them might use the service with the consent of their partner isn't enough to break through that, nor is the idea that two wrongs don't make a right.

I don't agree with the gleeful reaction, but I see no hypocrisy here.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#310

Post by caskance »

tptacek wrote: post #2

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had tr…

So does that mean those of us in favor of "dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs" are allowed to be gleeful here?

There is no such thing as private data. There is secret data, but that descriptor no longer applies here.

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