Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

krebsonsecurity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 527 posts

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#451

Post by [deleted] »

joaq wrote: post #394
martin1975 wrote: post #377

On the bright side, the one thing this unfortunate incident will do is create an opening for many couples to reconcile, now that the truth is out. "We cannot be facile and say bygones will be bygones, because they will not be bygones and will return to haunt us. True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness, which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an a…

Once a cheater always a cheater. There's some kind of gaussian curve in this regard (like in so many other human attributes). Some people will never cheat, while others will cheat very frequently and most people are somewhere in between. I've done a lot of research on this, there are a lot of facts that affect someone's propensity to cheat including their number of sexual partners, level of education, marital status…

[deleted]

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#452

Post by mikeash »

DarkTree wrote: post #317
mikeash wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 al…

I don't think that's the parent comment's main argument for hypocrisy. > how do you make a case that it's unethical for dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs? Many of these proponents of the hack will unabashedly praise this hack for making these 'cheaters' identities public, but would surely argue against the use of hacking for releasing their own private account inform…

I don't understand this argument that people "would surely argue against the use of hacking" in other places.

Context matters a lot. For example, most people would agree that killing is bad. On the other hand, most people would agree that killing in self defense, or to save the life of an innocent, is acceptable.

In the context of a hack, I imagine we'd all agree that hacking fluffy-bunnies-and-flowers.com and releasing all the subscriber information would be bad. On the other hand, I'd argue (and I think a lot of people agree) that hacking lets-help-each-other-plan-mass-murder-of-innocent-children.com and exposing its subscribers would be perfectly fine, even a good thing. There's nothing hypocritical about criticizing the former but praising the latter. The nature of the target counts.

All it really comes down to here is what category you think ashleymadison.com.com is in. Some people think it's in the former, because consenting adults and whatnot. Lots of people think it's in the latter, because they think cheating is extremely wrong. If you hold that opinion, then there's nothing hypocritical about praising a hack against a site like that. We might disagree with the opinion that ashleymadison.com is a bad site, but that's a different thing.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#453

Post by s73v3r »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #283
dsacco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think there are three questions here. Is it legal. Is it moral. Should it be legal. The last is quite complex and I won't get to it here because of the vast differences in moral theories as to what should and should not be legal. As to the first, is it legal? Hacking isn't. The end. But the middle question is interesting, and I dare say that many people have views such as my own, where morality is not dependent on…

There has to be an extremely strong moral case to override something already being illegal. This doesn't even come close.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#454

Post by vasilipupkin »

tertius wrote: post #407
vasilipupkin wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, it may very well be bound to get hacked, that doesn't make the ones doing the hacking moral or ethical or anything of the sort.

I disagree, since the ethics and morality of this service itself is gray, then the ethics of exposing those using the service is at least somewhat gray, whether it breaks a law or not.

that seems like fallacious reasoning to me. Ethics of cigarette industry are possibly grey, that doesn't mean it's ethical for you to break into their offices and steal their coffee maker.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#455

Post by s73v3r »

joaq wrote: post #384
the_af wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have the right approach, but infidelity is not "strongly immoral" in the sense that it entitles you to publicly humiliate people you aren't in any way related to. It's a private matter between two (or actually, more) people. Your spouse has the right to tell you what you did is "strongly immoral", but Joe Public doesn't. I have zero respect for someone from the public who thinks their moral outrage entitl…

"It's a private matter between two (or actually, more) people." Well, given that they're keeping their partner in the dark in the first place I don't see anything wrong with exposing the cheating scum.

If you were only telling the person being cheated on, you might have a point. But since you're now telling the entire world that someone was cheated on, or maybe not even cheated on, you've kinda lost that.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#456

Post by s73v3r »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #291
ZoFreX wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this poster: https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/3ebzzj/i_may_get_ston... there is not a requirement to be in a relationship to use the site. And now he might die, because of the leak.

>And now he might die, because of the leak. Isn't this akin to blaming Snowden/Manning for diplomatic fallout instead of blaming those who were engaging in the wrongful practices that led to the fallout.

No. Not at all.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#457

Post by s73v3r »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #362
smtddr wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, for others reading this comment: The wrongful practice implied here is the stoning, not being gay. Took me awhile to figure that out. I almost went on a rant.

tl;dr: In this case, it is the people killing gays who are at fault for gays being killed. I see three parts. Engaging in gay relationships, the hackers releasing data, and the people who do the stoning. In the Manning/Snowden case, there are also three parts. The US doing bad things, Manning/Snowden releasing it, and other governments reacting. Now, in the Snowden/Manning case, media tries to place blame for 3 on 2…

And at the same time, it's also the fault of the people who released the data. Because they released the data.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#458

Post by swagswag »

grogenaut wrote: post #95

I remember back in the day (2010) when I asked pandora in email to "NEVER PLAY ME AN ADD FROM THAT SCUZZY COMPANY AGAIN"... they replied that "we only play PG ads and we vet all adds so they are appropriate to all audiences. no apologies, just "you're wrong dude". I cancelled my account and I wasn't asked to cheat on my wife on a 30 minute basis after that.

You still together just wondering?

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#459

Post by Tloewald »

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…

> When I told her that hacking and outing people on a website because they do something you disagree with is playing God, she didn't seem to be phased at all.

I think she might be fazed by your telling her what is and isn't playing God.

> you can't convince someone this is unethical behavior if they are emotionally invested in it.

It would be unethical for A.M. to give out this data. It is almost certainly illegal for a hacker to do so, and you can argue that it's immoral, but it's not clear how it's unethical. Since the hackers did not make monetary demands (or did they) they seem to be operating according to their own code of conduct.

I'd say the most clearly wrong thing about this is disclosing CC details. The rest of it comes down to public shaming, and your girlfriend is simply taking the position (I believe) most women (I believe) take that cheaters deserve to be shamed.

Now, as to the CC details thing, surely it's the CC vendors who are the most unethical. Their entire system is hopelessly insecure and yet they persist in using it rather than adopting a more secure system (which they could certainly afford to do).

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#460

Post by digler999 »

rhino369 wrote: post #432
astrashe wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Snowden had just taken the documents and posted them online without any filtering, it would have been extremely unethical. It would have gotten people killed. But that's not what he did -- he enlisted reputable journalists to process the documents and make decisions about what was safe to release and what wasn't. Let's say the hackers in this situation wanted to prove that Avid Life Media was acting unethically --…

>he enlisted reputable journalists to process the documents and make decisions about what was safe to release and what wasn't. That's really only the bare minimum. He also exposed a bunch of obviously legal programs that just made the US look bad to allies or outted intelligence programs designed to attack future potential enemies. He did this because he believed those actions were morally wrong. I don't see how that…

> Both are punishing people for violations of your moral code.

The difference is that exposing someone having extramarital sex doesn't violate the US Constitution and the rights of 300M of its citizens.

Post reply on HN