Israel Matzav: Israeli MK's details among those dumped by Ashley Madison hackers

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Israeli MK's details among those dumped by Ashley Madison hackers

For those of you living in caves, several weeks ago, hackers got into the website of Ashley Madison, a site that facilitates married people having affairs. The hackers threatened to expose the names, addresses and bank account numbers of the site's registered users if the site did not shut down. The site, on the verge of an initial public offering, did not shut down and hoped to find the hackers. Too late. Today, the site's users were exposed. One of them is an Israeli MK (more details about him at the end of this post).

Hackers dumped online personal details of more than a million users of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com – including that of an Israeli Knesset member, according to reports.

The MK told Israeli media that he intends to file a police complaint over identity theft.

After threatening to release salacious details on as many as 37 million customers of the website, which uses the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair," hackers claimed to publish a huge cache of email addresses and credit card data stolen in July.

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the authenticity of the posting. Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison and Established Men, widely described as a "sugar daddy site," did not verify the data was real, but said it was aware of the claim.
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It is possible to create an Ashley Madison account using someone else's name and email.

So who's the MK? Well, he's also a polygamist already... and he's an 'Israeli Arab.'

The official Knesset e-mail address of Joint List MK Taleb Abu Arar, a bigamist, was found to have registered for Ashley Madison, a dating website for people who want to cheat on their spouses, when hackers released about 36 million members’ e-mail addresses.

According to the hack, Abu Arar not only registered for the infidelity site, he confirmed his e-mail address. That extra step is not necessary in order to join Ashley Madison, but the hack indicates that 24 million of the e-mail addresses released were confirmed.

Abu Arar denied having any connection to the website and said he plans to file a complaint to the police.

“Someone signed up with my e-mail address in order to sully my good name,” he said, calling for Ashley Madison to reveal the source of the registration.

Knesset e-mail addresses can be accessed by MKs and their aides on the Knesset’s secure computers, or via an encrypted connection from computers outside the Knesset, and with a code on the MKs’ and aides’ phones.

Unlike the average hacked Ashley Madison user, Abu Arar will have to explain his presence on the infidelity site to not one wife, but two. The second wife is by a common-law marriage, in order not to break the law against bigamy. Abu Arar, who is Beduin, has a combined 10 children from both of them.