The data that was stolen from Ashley
Madison contained a lot of information from the 37 million users of the site,
and it revealed a lot of information. The data was very large, 9.7 GB in size, and
it contained the all the names, passwords, addresses, phone numbers, and credit
card transactions of the site’s users (2015, Wikipedia). The data was released in three data dumps on
the web. The first two data dumps released the personal information of the Ashley
Madison users. The third released the personal emails of the Ashley Madison
founder and CEO Noel Biderman. Those emails revealed that Noel cheated on his
wife and also attempted to hook up with three women on the site. As a result of
the data leak and the personal email released, Noel resigned and stepped down
as CEO.
The
data also revealed a lot information besides the names, passwords, addresses,
phone numbers, and credit card transactions. 15,000 accounts used the email
address that ended in .mil or .gov, which indicates that they are a member of
the US military or the US government agency (2015, National Post). About 273,320
email addresses were from .ca what is a Canadian domain, and 163 accounts were
from the Canadian military (@forces.gc.ca) (2015, National Post). The data
revealed that about 70,000 female account were fake, and they were not real
women looking for affairs (2015, Wikipedia).
As you can see
that simple data can reveal a lot a different information about the users of companies.
All the billion bites of data that companies around the world gather daily needs
to be protected and cyber security needs to be held in high priority.
(2015,
August 19). Ashley Madison data leak:
Who has been exposed and what are the implications? [News Post].
Retrieved from http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com//news/world/ashley-madison-data-leak-who-has-been-exposed-and-what-are-the-implications
(2015,
October 14). Ashley Madison [Wikipedia Post]. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Madison
Posts
Wow! Reading the break down of users that belong to the government and military blows me away. I mean yes, they are everyday people but when you see information like that for some reason it makes it an even bigger deal. As far as the CEO Noel Biderman it shows a lot about his integrity and self worth, all I can say is that resigning is the ONLY good thing he could have done for himself, although this leak is far from over in the legal aspect of things.
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