EXPLAINING THE DATA LEAK
WHAT ARE ASHLEY MADISON AND ESTABLISHED GENTLEMEN?
Both Ashley Madison and Established Gentlemen are online dating sites owned by Canadian company Avid Life Media (ALM). Ashley Madison specialises in infidelity dating. Established Gentlemen connects older "Sugar Daddies" with young women.
WHY WERE THEY TARGETED?
A hacker group launched an attack on both ALM sites, claiming the service was a fraud, specifically in offering security when, in fact, customers were easily exposed. A service costing $US19 ($A26) claimed to delete user data but the hackers proved this to be false by dumping the data, along with thousands of other files, on to the dark web.
WHAT IS THE DARK WEB?
What most people access and call the internet is just a small portion of the web and is better referred to as the surface web. A large amount of the internet is not indexed in search engines. This is called the deep web and accounts for close to 90 per cent of all data available online. The dark web is a tiny portion of the deep web, intentionally hidden from search engines, and requires specific browsers to access it. It offers a high level of anonymity and therefore hosts a wide range of activity and sites ranging from the mundane to the illegal. It is here that large data dumps attained by hackers are often uploaded.
WHO IS EXPOSED?
From politicians to private citizens, the details published online on August 19 left millions at the mercy of anyone who downloads the data. With names, addresses, financial information, emails and even what appears to be locational data released in the hack, experts have already warned of potential blackmail resulting from the leaks.
WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
With close to 10GB of data widely available on the internet and little any company or law enforcement agency can do to remove it completely, it brings the question of the security of websites and customer data into question.
