Close Menu
TechCentralTechCentral

    Subscribe to the newsletter

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube LinkedIn
    WhatsApp Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentralTechCentral
    • News

      Blue Label Telecoms to change its name as restructuring gathers pace

      11 July 2025

      Get your ID delivered like pizza – home affairs’ latest digital shake-up

      11 July 2025

      EFF vows to stop Starlink from launching in South Africa

      11 July 2025

      Apple plans product blitz to reignite growth

      11 July 2025

      Nissan doubles down on South Africa despite plant uncertainty

      11 July 2025
    • World

      Grok 4 arrives with bold claims and fresh controversy

      10 July 2025

      Bitcoin pushes higher into record territory

      10 July 2025

      Cupertino vs Brussels: Apple challenges Big Tech crackdown

      7 July 2025

      Grammarly acquires e-mail start-up Superhuman

      1 July 2025

      Apple considers ditching its own AI in Siri overhaul

      1 July 2025
    • In-depth

      Siemens is battling Big Tech for AI supremacy in factories

      24 June 2025

      The algorithm will sing now: why musicians should be worried about AI

      20 June 2025

      Meta bets $72-billion on AI – and investors love it

      17 June 2025

      MultiChoice may unbundle SuperSport from DStv

      12 June 2025

      Grok promised bias-free chat. Then came the edits

      2 June 2025
    • TCS

      TCS+ | MVNX on the opportunities in South Africa’s booming MVNO market

      11 July 2025

      TCS | Connecting Saffas – Renier Lombard on The Lekker Network

      7 July 2025

      TechCentral Nexus S0E4: Takealot’s big Post Office jobs plan

      4 July 2025

      TCS | Tech, townships and tenacity: Spar’s plan to win with Spar2U

      3 July 2025

      TCS+ | First Distribution on the latest and greatest cloud technologies

      27 June 2025
    • Opinion

      In defence of equity alternatives for BEE

      30 June 2025

      E-commerce in ICT distribution: enabler or disruptor?

      30 June 2025

      South Africa pioneered drone laws a decade ago – now it must catch up

      17 June 2025

      AI and the future of ICT distribution

      16 June 2025

      Singapore soared – why can’t we? Lessons South Africa refuses to learn

      13 June 2025
    • Company Hubs
      • Africa Data Centres
      • AfriGIS
      • Altron Digital Business
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Altron Group
      • Arctic Wolf
      • AvertITD
      • Braintree
      • CallMiner
      • CambriLearn
      • CYBER1 Solutions
      • Digicloud Africa
      • Digimune
      • Domains.co.za
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • Incredible Business
      • iONLINE
      • Iris Network Systems
      • LSD Open
      • NEC XON
      • Network Platforms
      • Next DLP
      • Ovations
      • Paracon
      • Paratus
      • Q-KON
      • SevenC
      • SkyWire
      • Solid8 Technologies
      • Telit Cinterion
      • Tenable
      • Vertiv
      • Videri Digital
      • Wipro
      • Workday
    • Sections
      • AI and machine learning
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud services
      • Contact centres and CX
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Electronics and hardware
      • Energy and sustainability
      • Enterprise software
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Lifestyle
      • Motoring
      • Public sector
      • Retail and e-commerce
      • Science
      • SMEs and start-ups
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Events
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home » In-depth » Ashley Madison and the rise of the moralist hacker

    Ashley Madison and the rise of the moralist hacker

    By The Conversation22 July 2015
    Twitter LinkedIn Facebook WhatsApp Email Telegram Copy Link
    News Alerts
    WhatsApp

    ashley-madison-640

    There’s value in more than just credit card data, as Avid Life Media (ALM), parent company of the extramarital affair website Ashley Madison, has found out after being raided for millions of their customer’s details.

    All sorts of information that isn’t expressly financial is valuable — HR records including personal information and health information, such as those stolen from the US government, can be used to fraudulently gain access to other data, or for blackmail for financial gain or to further a political or moral agenda.

    The Ashley Madison hackers, calling themselves Impact Team, seem to have a moral agenda, adding another dimension to the factors that motivate cybercriminals, and therefore something else for overburdened security professionals to consider.

    There is a spectrum of sensitive information, from an e-mail address to private secrets. The theft of the Ashley Madison databases, essentially a list of 37m possible adulterers’ identifying details, must rank as one of the most “sensitive” troves of data ever acquired. While there will be credit card details too, it’s the potential for public (and private) embarrassment that many will be fearing.

    Reported by security research Brian Krebs and confirmed by ALM CEO Noel Biderman, Impact Team’s statement rails against the motivations not just of the supposed cheaters using the site, but the site itself for facilitating this behaviour, demanding that ALM close down Ashley Madison and another of its sites, Established Men, permanently or risk the details being published.

    Impact Team’s ire is directed particularly at ALM’s “full delete” service where, for US$19, all a user’s details will be deleted. They claim ALM made $1,7m from this service, yet leave the credit card details, obviously including real names and addresses, intact. Impact Team hint that the hack was made possible through an insider — embarrassing for a firm that had aimed to raise $200m this summer from an IPO.

    According to a recent survey by Thales, typically the most sensitive data that is encrypted is employee and HR data. It goes without saying that this is highly sensitive information that can bring repercussions both on the individuals and the firm in question. As customers, we may not be pleased to note that customer details are some way down the list. Really, all these aspects should be closer to 100%.

    Intellectual property is certainly a target for cyberattacks, with the loss of source code and secret product information potentially disastrous for companies. Hacking Team recently found the internal code of their commercial hacking tools posted all over the Internet, for example.

    When university researchers analysed 300 discarded hard disk drives they found that a third contained personal data including health and banking information (including a €50bn currency exchange service), and even details for a missile defence system. The lack of planning and care in how this information was dealt with is astonishing.

    Poking the hornet’s nest
    The catastrophic raid on Sony’s corporate network last year was blamed on North Korea, but Sony has battled Anonymous, Lulzsec and Lizard Squad over the years, often over their stance on breaches of copyright. Again, a disgruntled insider within Sony is the most likely source of the breach. The hack led to all manner of documents appearing online — such as embarrassing e-mails from senior executives.

    Sony’s trouble with hacking organisations can be traced to its court case against George Holtz, who Sony sued after he published root encryption keys for the PlayStation console. Sony demanded identifying details of visitors to his website and social media pages, and was given access to Holtz’s PayPal account. The case judge eventually granted Sony permission to view IP addresses of everyone who visited Holtz’s site, geohot.com. In April 2011, Sony settled the lawsuit out of court, but have since faced many further attacks.

    The fact is hackers are increasingly pursuing a variety of agendas. In protest at St Louis County Police involvement in the death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the police department’s website was attacked, knocking it offline for several days. The group responsible declared they had gained access to dispatch tapes related to the day of the shooting, which they then uploaded to YouTube.

    The message left by Hacking Team
    The message left by Impact Team

    In political actions worldwide, from the Arab Spring uprising, to Russia’s suspected cyberattacks on Estonian government websites, or the Syrian Electronic Army, the Internet is increasingly a new vector of attack. The Internet as battleground is not in the future, it is already here, and as attack on the French channel TV5Monde should remind us, it may escalate to include control of news outlets, too.

    Organisations need to understand that there are new risks and new ways to distribute messages, especially from those skilful enough to disrupt traditional methods. It’s important to note that the viewpoint of the hacktivist will often be reflected in the political landscape of the time, and that this is subject to change. The hacktivist, a cybercriminal to some, can be a freedom fighter to others.

    The Internet provides a voice for all, and there are many examples where corporations, organisations or governments have outraged groups around the world who have successfully staged an uprising or retaliation against them. Someone may be small on the Internet, but can still have a massive impact. Sony lost billions of dollars from its share price, and forfeited a great deal of customer confidence.

    A strong defence is the starting point, but if there is trusted internal access then it is possible to circumvent the locks. With digital media cards now supporting hundreds of gigabytes of data it’s not too difficult to take huge amounts of data off-site — and this is why encryption is so vital. In short:

    • Encrypt sensitive data
    • Control and limit access to sensitive data
    • Make sure those controls work
    • Check who has access to the data
    • Integrate multi-factor authentication for the access to sensitive information
    • Watch where you back up your data and protect that, too
    • Don’t use the same encryption keys for everything

    And finally, try not to upset people. Ashley Madison rashly boasted of its superior security, while flaunting what many would describe as unethical behaviour. Such things are red rags to a bull. Companies need to understand that their insecurity today is as much to do with their behaviour and the reactions or political and social aims of others in response as it is the straightforward quest for financial gain.The Conversation

    • Bill Buchanan is head, Centre for Distributed Computing, Networks and Security at Edinburgh Napier University
    • This article was originally published on The Conversation


    ALM Ashley Madison Bill Buchanan
    Subscribe to TechCentral Subscribe to TechCentral
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email Copy Link
    Previous ArticleAdvtech rejects Curro’s advances
    Next Article How crooks steal your identity

    Related Posts

    Bitcoin’s moment of reckoning arrives

    28 April 2016

    The cloud isn’t as robust as we think

    1 October 2015

    How to create a bulletproof password

    31 August 2015
    Company News

    $125-trillion traded: Binance redefines global finance in just eight years

    11 July 2025

    NEC XON welcomes HPE acquisition of Juniper Networks

    11 July 2025

    LTE Cat 1 vs Cat 1 bis – what’s the difference?

    11 July 2025
    Opinion

    In defence of equity alternatives for BEE

    30 June 2025

    E-commerce in ICT distribution: enabler or disruptor?

    30 June 2025

    South Africa pioneered drone laws a decade ago – now it must catch up

    17 June 2025

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2025 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.