As someone who works in security, you should be extremely skeptical of their stated reasons, or even the validity of the data.
There were a LOT of divorces following that leak, citing the hack as proof of infidelity, but the reality is that the leakers could have added people to the data explicitly to facilitate uneven divorce settlements (e.g. adding a woman to the site in order to give the husband a means to demand no split of assets).
As much as it would be great to imagine hacktivist crusaders going after cheaters, there was a lot of money moved on the back of that leak, and in fact one of the problems with Ashley Madison was that prior to the hack it was used to essentially extort non-users, because anyone could create a profile with any email, but if someone created a profile of you, you had to both verify yourself with your ID (which they saved), and pay them money to delete it (which the leak revealed they didn’t actually do anyways).
Yeah I know… People suffered a lot even people died. But who is to blame here ? Noel Birdman, who didn’t complied because of his own greed knowing perfectly he was misleading his customers to cash out ? Or those hackers exposing their motive to close the site ?
Would it be different if it only affected people from a higher status?
Personally, Noel Birdman should be in prison for what he has done but he is free like a bird doing the exact same scheme.
For the extortion, that’s another issue. But I do agree that they could have only leaked Birdman’s info and other important stuff to damage their reputation, but that would only be temporary…
That’s the real stuff I like it reminds me of the Ashley Madison hack… Not motivated by money, just making things right !
As someone who works in security, you should be extremely skeptical of their stated reasons, or even the validity of the data.
There were a LOT of divorces following that leak, citing the hack as proof of infidelity, but the reality is that the leakers could have added people to the data explicitly to facilitate uneven divorce settlements (e.g. adding a woman to the site in order to give the husband a means to demand no split of assets).
As much as it would be great to imagine hacktivist crusaders going after cheaters, there was a lot of money moved on the back of that leak, and in fact one of the problems with Ashley Madison was that prior to the hack it was used to essentially extort non-users, because anyone could create a profile with any email, but if someone created a profile of you, you had to both verify yourself with your ID (which they saved), and pay them money to delete it (which the leak revealed they didn’t actually do anyways).
Yeah I know… People suffered a lot even people died. But who is to blame here ? Noel Birdman, who didn’t complied because of his own greed knowing perfectly he was misleading his customers to cash out ? Or those hackers exposing their motive to close the site ?
Would it be different if it only affected people from a higher status?
Personally, Noel Birdman should be in prison for what he has done but he is free like a bird doing the exact same scheme.
For the extortion, that’s another issue. But I do agree that they could have only leaked Birdman’s info and other important stuff to damage their reputation, but that would only be temporary…