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Ashley Madison Cyberattack
Cyber Psychology
Bournemouth University
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Psychological aspects of the Ashley Madison Cyberattack Ashley Madison Cyberattack Background Ashley Madison is a dating website for married people who wish to cheat on their partners Operates in more than 50 countries, and has 37 million users, more than a million of whom live in the UK The website promises to connect married people seeking an affair Customer data was stolen from the website, and reportedly leaked on the “dark web” – only accessible via encrypted browsers (July 2015) Technology website Wired: said that 9 gigabytes of data was posted, and the material included members’ accounts and credit card details After the leak, people found they could be identified not only by their names and addresses, but also by their height, weight and even their erotic preferences (the Guardian). A small number of suicides were reported, a priest in Louisiana among them Hackers stole the data and threatened to reveal it unless the match making site for married people was taken down Motivations The group is known as the “Impact Team” They have criticised Ashley Madison’s core mission of arranging affairs between married individuals Secondly, they have attacked Ashley Madison’s business practices, in particular the requirement for users to pay $19 for the privilege of deleting all their data from the site However, it turned out that not all the data was removed Impact Team claimed that the Full Delete option left a significant amount of data still on Ashley Madison’s servers – a claim that was borne out the following month when the group, seeing that its demands had not been met, released the full database of 33m user records. Ashley Madison attempted to use copyright law to scrub the database from the internet, but to no avail. Psychological aspects of the Ashley Madison Cyberattack Psychological aspects Selection of the target by the attackers Explanation The hackers took advantage of the fact that the site’s aim of promising affairs is generally perceived as immoral, this reduces the public sympathising with the site’s owners and users The hackers could have targeted Ashley Madison to address a perceived social injustice Psychological Manipulation of the target Blackmail & Threats Minimising the negative consequences of their actions – claiming that Ashley Madison does not remove users’ data, as it claimed it would if users pay. 6 months after the site was hacked, spouses of former and current users of the site were targeted by blackmail attempts, as well as the users themselves. Literature/Evidence Rogers (2010) argues that those who do engage in cybercrime cope with the cognitive dissonance (inconsistent thoughts) this creates in four ways (includes minimising consequences) Online disinhibition effect (Suler, 2004), This could play a role in the hacker/s behaving in a threatening/aggressive manner Almost as soon as the database was made public, accountholders started receiving anonymous blackmail letters, first electronically and then physically. The letters demanded payment in thousands of dollars, to avoid having their membership of the site made public. One specific letter in December 2015, reported that it demanded $4,167 with a threat of exposing existence to the account “to people close to” the victim Group processes Victims perception of cybersecurity Hackers known as the “Impact team”, identities anonymous. Possibility that the individuals within the group conformed to other members and made a risky decision which affected millions of users and lives after the hack. It was discovered that many passwords were simplistic and easy to guess anyway e. 12345 amongst many others People believed that the site was discreet and safe as it claimed to be (using certified badges to look legitimate) Individuals are also known to make riskier decisions when in groups than when alone (Wallach et al, 1962) Schmidt and Arnett (2005) also suggest that people tend to perceive themselves to be at less risk than their peers
Ashley Madison Cyberattack
Module: Cyber Psychology
University: Bournemouth University
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