Why The Ashley Madison Hack Is Unique
The recent fallout of the Ashley Madison hack, and subsequent expose of unfaithful individuals, continues to occupy the headlines. There has been countless reports of families being torn apart and it appears that individuals from a variety of backgrounds have had their infidelity exposed to the world’s prying eyes. However, there is something unique about this particular hack and it appears that the verberations threaten to be felt for quite some time yet.
The hack was carried out in July by an online hacking group simply known as the Impact Team. The group initially published a manifesto online, which outlined their reasons for the hack and the subsequent exposure of the website’s members. It was claimed that their main reason was due to a fraudulent claim by Ashley Madison’s parent company, Cougar Life and Established Men, that users could permanently delete all of their information held by the company for a one-off fee of $19. However, after reading their manifesto, one can draw the conclusion that their main reason was due to their distaste at the website’s parent company profiteering from the suffering of others. The group proceeded to threaten to publish details of 36 million Ashley Maddison accounts unless the website went offline immediately.
Ashley Madison continued to remain online, and subsequently, the Impact Group published the hacked information for the entire world to browse. The world now has access to the account details of 36 million members, including their credit card details and personal email addresses. This sparked a mass frenzy of concerned individuals checking to as to whether or not their spouse had signed up and members of the general public clambering to see if they could identify celebrities who held accounts.
Despite the fact that these individuals chose to sign-up to the website, there has reportedly been cases where outed-individuals are employing the services of serious fraud solicitors to seek damages from Ashley Madison due to the “emotional distress” suffered from being outed.
While hacking is certainly not a new concept, this particular hack is different from others due to the potential psychological impact on the personal lives of 36 million people. While the majority of other hacks usually affect individuals for a relatively short period of time, this particular one will have more than changed the lives of numerous individuals, and left them vulnerable to malicious attacks from those intending to extort money. It is believed that there are around 15,000 accounts linked to email addresses hosted on the top-level US government and military servers using the .mil and .gov domains.
The data also contains the subscribers’ sexual orientations and sexual-preferences; while some may consider this as justice somehow being served, when you consider the number of high-level individuals affected, it certainly highlights concerns about the ways in which these individuals could be the object of extortion and intimidation.
As I am sure that you can imagine, there have been numerous suicides linked to the hack since it was carried out, including both those responsible for the cyber-crime and those whose details were part of those leaked online. Unsurprisingly there have also been a host of websites popping-up that allow individuals to check whether or not a loved one’s email address is included in the data. However, it is not clear whether or not this is yet another method that has questionable intentions. One thing is certain though, it appears that this effects of this saga will be felt for quite some time and won’t end well for many people.
