Ashley Madison aftermath: Confessions, suicide reports and hot on the hacker's trail (2024)

As a worldwide manhunt for the Ashley Madison hackers ramps up, the massive data breach has already broken up marriages and forced public officials to stand behind podiums and make painful personal admissions. The National Post’s Tristin Hopper reviews the ongoing saga of the Ashley Madison hack.

Why are the Toronto police on the case?

Avid Life Media, the owners of Ashley Madison and other similar sites, is headquartered in Toronto. Thus, police are treating this hack much the same as they would treat any multi-million dollar attack on a local company. However, given the massive scope of the hack, the investigation is quickly attracting other law enforcement agencies. As of Monday, the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP and the FBI had joined the search for the hackers. Although the location and nationality of the attacker is not known, it shouldn’t matter. According to the Convention on Cybercrime, to which Canada is a signatory, the fact that Ashley Madison’s computers are on Canadian soil is all that is needed to claim the hack as a crime committed in Canada.

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Has the hack really killed people?

On Monday, Toronto police said only that they had “two unconfirmed reports of suicides” stemming from the hack, and did not say where the suspected deaths occurred. Although media reports claimed that a U.S. police captain took his own life as a result of the hack, it is virtually impossible to verify whether this is correct. Given the massive scope of the names released (32 million) it’s almost guaranteed that some of the users listed would have taken their own lives this week with or without a data breach. Canada has 35 million people, for instance, and tallies roughly 10 suicides a day. Even if suicides were triggered as a result of the hack, however, it is quite likely that other mental health issues were at play.

What’s the likelihood that investigators will find the culprit?

“Based on the success of recent targeted cases, the chances of locating and prosecuting these hackers are good,” said Claudiu Popa, CEO of Toronto-based risk assessment firm Informatica Corporation, writing in an email to the National Post. Law enforcement agencies have taken down some major alleged cybercriminals in recent years, such as the 2013 FBI shutdown of Silk Road, a well-known online black market. Also, it helps that the Ashley Madison hack is somewhat amateurish. In fact, John McAfee, the millionaire founder of McAfee Antivirus, claims to have already figured out that the data breach was carried out by a disgruntled employee of Avid Life Media. Of course, his reasoning is a little dubious, such as his assertion that the culprit is female because a manifesto by the hackers uses the term “cheating dirtbags.” “I think in any language this would suggest that a woman is speaking,” he wrote in a column for International Business Times.

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What are the likely charges?

The Criminal Code of Canada contains several sections just for this type of thing. The Ashley Madison hackers would likely be charged under laws against stealing computer data, breaking into computer networks and even “possessing a computer password … to commit an offence of unauthorized use.” When a Quebec teenager was arrested last summer for stealing 22,421 user names and passwords from Bell Canada, for instance, they were charged with several counts of “unauthorized use of computer” and “mischief in relation to data.” Cybercrime punishments vary, ranging from a maximum of 10 years in jail to a life sentence if prosecutors can prove that the hackers’ actions posed “actual danger to life.”

Six days after the data was released, what damage has it done?

The hack affected 32 million users from Brazil to the Solomon Islands, so the fallout is truly global — even if much of it, for obvious reasons, is being kept private. Over the weekend, the internet abounded with anonymous reports of users fearing for their jobs and marriages. “Kimberly,” a neurophysiologist in Richmond, Va., for instance, told CNNMoney that finding her husband’s email on the site was the last straw in their deteriorating marriage. On Sunday, Florida state prosecutor Jeff Ashton admitted at a press conference to briefly using the site out of “curiosity” after his email address showed up in the data. With their email addresses now public, users are also being subject to scams and blackmail from cybercriminals, such as one message that demanded $225 to keep the data secret from their “significant other.”

National Post

• Email: thopper@nationalpost.com | Twitter: TristinHopper

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