36 million users of the Ashley Madison site are now directly in the crosshairs of at least 3 types of scams.–PC Pitstop
Ashley Madison Extortion Has Begun
By Stu Sjouwerman, for KnowBe4.com Security Awareness Training
Your end-users saw this in the news yesterday, or will read about it today. The hackers who stole more than 36 million records from the Ashley Madison site (which makes it easy to cheat on your spouse), have now posted all the records for everyone to see. This is a bad one.
Cyber criminals are going to leverage this event in a lot of different ways: (spear-) phishing attacks, bogus websites where you can “check if your spouse is cheating on you”, or ways to find out if your own extramarital affair has come out.
Any of these 36 million registered users are now a target for a multitude of social engineering attacks. People that have (had) straight or gay extramarital affairs can be made to click on links in emails that threaten to out them.
I have already seen the phishing emails that claim people can go to a website to find out if their private data has been released. This is a nightmare that will be exploited by spammers, phishers and blackmailers who are now gleefully rubbing their hands, let alone the divorce lawyers and private investigators that are pouring over the data now.
Here is one of the first real examples of AshMad extortion: Article Continued Here
