[This is Part II of a story published here last week on reporting that went into a new Hulu documentary series on the 2015 Ashley Madison hack.]
It was round 9 p.m. on Sunday, July 19, after I obtained a message by way of the contact kind on KrebsOnSecurity.com that the marital infidelity web site AshleyMadison.com had been hacked. The message contained hyperlinks to confidential Ashley Madison paperwork, and included a manifesto that mentioned a hacker group calling itself the Influence Staff was ready to leak information on all 37 million customers except Ashley Madison and a sister property voluntarily closed down inside 30 days.
A snippet of the message left behind by the Influence Staff.
The message included hyperlinks to information containing extremely delicate info, together with snippets of leaked consumer account information, maps of inner AshleyMadison firm servers, worker community account info, firm checking account information and wage info.
A grasp worker contact listing was among the many paperwork leaked that night. Helpfully, it included the cellphone quantity for Noel Biderman, then the CEO of Ashley Madison father or mother agency Avid Life Media (ALM). To my eternal shock, Biderman answered on the primary ring and acknowledged they’d been hacked with out even ready to be requested.
“We’re on the doorstep of [confirming] who we imagine is the offender, and sadly that will have triggered this mass publication,” Biderman informed me on July 19, simply minutes earlier than I printed the primary identified public report in regards to the breach. “I’ve acquired their profile proper in entrance of me, all their work credentials. It was positively an individual right here that was not an worker however actually had touched our technical companies.”
On Aug 18, 2015, the Influence Staff posted a “Time’s up!” message on-line, together with hyperlinks to 60 gigabytes of Ashley Madison consumer information. The info leak led to the general public shaming and extortion of many Ashley Madison customers, and to no less than two suicides. Many different customers misplaced their jobs or their marriages. To today, no one has been charged within the hack, and extremely Ashley Madison stays a thriving firm.
THE CHAOS MAKER
The previous worker that Biderman undoubtedly had in thoughts on July 19, 2015 was William Brewster Harrison, a self-described skilled in search engine marketing (search engine optimisation) tips which might be designed to assist web sites improve their rankings for numerous key phrases in Google and different serps.
It’s evident that Harrison was Biderman’s prime suspect instantly after the breach turned public as a result of — along with releasing information on 37 million customers a month later in August 2015 — the hackers additionally dumped three years price of e-mail they stole from Biderman. And Biderman’s inbox is stuffed with messages about hate-filled private assaults from Harrison.
A Native of Northern Virginia, Harrison finally settled in North Carolina, had a son along with his then-wife, and began a fence-building enterprise. ALM employed Harrison in March 2010 to advertise its numerous grownup manufacturers on-line, and it’s clear that one in all his roles was creating and sustaining feminine profiles on Ashley Madison, and creating blogs that have been made to appear like they have been written by girls who’d simply joined Ashley Madison.
A selfie that William B. Harrison posted to his Fb web page in 2013 reveals him holding a handgun and sporting a bulletproof vest.
It seems Harrison was working as an affiliate of Ashley Madison previous to his official employment with the corporate, which means that Harrison had already demonstrated he may drive signups to the service and assist enhance its standing within the search engine rankings.
What’s much less clear is whether or not anybody at ALM ever carried out a primary background examine on Harrison earlier than hiring him. As a result of if they’d, the outcomes nearly actually would have given them pause. Virginia prosecutors charged the younger 20-something Harrison with a sequence of misdemeanors, together with trespassing, illegal entry, drunk in public, and making obscene cellphone calls.
In 2008, North Carolina authorities charged Harrison with felony extortion, a case that was transferred to South Carolina earlier than finally being dismissed. In December 2009, Harrison confronted costs of false imprisonment, costs that have been additionally dropped by the native district lawyer.
By the point Ashley Madison formally employed him, Harrison’s life was falling aside. His fence enterprise had failed, and he’d simply filed for chapter. Additionally, his marriage had soured, and after a brand new arrest for driving underneath the affect, he was at risk of getting divorced, shedding entry to his son, and/or going to jail.
It additionally appears possible that no one at ALM bothered to have a look at the handfuls of domains registered to Harrison’s numerous Vistomail.com e-mail addresses, as a result of had they executed so that they possible would have observed two issues.
One is that Harrison had a historical past of making web sites to lambaste firms he didn’t like, or that he believed had slighted him or his household indirectly. A few of these web sites included content material that defamed and doxed executives, similar to bash-a-business[.]com, google-your-business[.]com, contact-a-ceo[.]com, lowes-is-a-cancer[.]com (based on Harrison, the house enchancment chain as soon as employed his spouse).
A background examine on Harrison’s on-line footprint additionally would have revealed he was a self-styled rapper who claimed to be an lively menace to company America. Harrison’s web site lyrical-gangsta[.]com included plenty of works, similar to “Slim Thug — I Run — Remix Spoof,” that are replete with menacing phrases for unnamed company executives:
[HOOK]
I visit cyberspace all evening n day (the net love thug)
cuz I nonetheless visit cyberspace all evening n day
yuhh I sort for my thoughts, acquired good for my ego
nonetheless working circles spherical them, what’s good?
cuz I nonetheless surf, the web all evening n day,
I cant keep away.
They don’t make to [sic] many hackers like me
bonafide hustler licensed G
nonetheless pumpin’ the TOP 10 outcomes
should you acquired the best dough!
suppose the outcomes are pretend? sucka Google ME
smarter than executives, larger then Wal-Mart
Nelly strugglin’ with the truth that I’m #1 NOW
road boys know me, ain’t nuttin’ new
about to make my mill, with an all new crew
I-95 execs don’t know what to do, or the place to go
watchin them shares evaporate all their dough
I already left the hood, acquired up off the streets
its in my blood im a gangsta until Im deceased
shifting lumber for cash or typin’ in a zone
all evening hackin’ until 6 within the mornin
that shit im focusin’ on, stronger then cologne
you possibly can prolly odor the jealousy
by way of your LCD display
should you nonetheless broke– higher work for some inexperienced
known as them Fortune execs on that authorized bluff
cuz the Feds busy raidin different stuff
Imma run the Web til im six ft underneath
I’m a go away my mark — no motive to surprise
(Yea Yea)
Among the anti-corporate rhymes busted by Harrison’s hacker/rapper alter ego “Chaos Canine.” Picture: Archive.org.
The identical theme seems in one other rap (“The Hacker Backstage”) penned by Harrison’s rapper alter ego — “Chaos Canine:”
…this hacker was born to write down
bust off the rhymes and watch em take flight
you realize all about them company jets
and handing out pinkslips with out regrets
outsized firms are the issue
effectively, I’ve acquired an answer
It’s known as good ol’ usual retribution
file chapter, boycott you want Boston colonists
Company America cant cease this Eminem type columnist
2pac would have honored my type
Im the following era of hacker inspiration
People don’t need a company nation
All that DOW Jones shit is a dying sensation
Along with pimping Ashley Madison with pretend profiles and phony consumer blogs, it seems Harrison additionally went after the corporate’s enemies in the course of the temporary time he was an worker. As famous in Half I of this story, Harrison used a number of pseudonymous Vistomail.com e-mail addresses to harass the homeowners of AshleyMadisonSucks[.]com into promoting or shutting down the positioning.
When the proprietor of AshleyMadisonSucks[.]com refused to promote the area, he and his then-girlfriend have been topic to an unrelenting marketing campaign of on-line harassment and blackmail. It now seems these assaults have been perpetrated by Harrison, who despatched emails from totally different accounts on the free e-mail service Vistomail pretending to be the area proprietor, his then-girlfriend and their associates. Harrison even went after the area proprietor’s lawyer and spouse, itemizing them each on his Contact-A-CEO[.]com web site.
TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY
Issues began going sideways for Ashley Madison when Harrison’s employment contract was terminated in November 2011. The leaked emails don’t clarify why Harrison was fired, however his mercurial temperament possible performed a significant function. In response to Harrison, it was as a result of he had expressed some ethical reservations with sure points of his duties, though he was not particular on that time and none of this might be confirmed.
Shortly after Harrison was fired, the corporate’s executives started noticing that Google was auto-completing the phrases “Jew” and “Jewish” at any time when somebody looked for Biderman’s identify. The outcomes returned when one accepted Google’s really useful search on the time stuffed the primary web page with hyperlinks to Stormfront, a far-right, neo-Nazi hate group. The corporate strongly suspected somebody was utilizing underhanded search engine optimisation strategies to slander and assault its CEO.
In July 2022, KrebsOnSecurity printed a retrospective on the 2015 Ashley Madison breach which discovered that Biderman had change into the topic of accelerating ire from members of Stormfront and different extremists teams within the years main as much as the hack. In response to the neo-Nazi teams, Biderman was a worthy goal of their harassment not simply because he was a profitable Jewish CEO, but in addition as a result of his firm was hellbent on destroying Christian morals and households.
Biderman’s leaked emails present that in February 2021 he employed Brian Cuban — the lawyer brother of Mark Cuban, the proprietor of the Dallas Mavericks and one the principle “sharks” on the ABC actuality tv sequence Shark Tank. By Cuban, Ashley Madison appealed their case to each Google and to the Anti-Defamation League, however neither was apparently in a position or prepared to assist.
Additionally in early January 2012, Biderman and different Ashley Madison executives discovered themselves inundated with nameless Vistomail.com emails that have been replete with profanity and slurs in opposition to Jews. Though he used pretend names and e-mail addresses, Harrison made little effort to cover his identification in a number of of those nastygrams.
One notably ugly message from Harrison even included a hyperlink to a Youtube video he’d put on-line of his younger son enjoying basketball for a college crew. That Youtube video was included in an e-mail whereby Harrison – then separated from his spouse — lamented all of the hours he spent working for Ashley Madison up in Canada as a substitute of spending time along with his son.
Harrison then turned to creating threatening cellphone calls to Ashley Madison executives. In a single incident in March 2012, Harrison known as the corporate’s former director of Human Assets utilizing a caller ID spoofing service to make it appear like he was calling from contained in the constructing.
ALM’s legal professionals contacted the Toronto police in response to Harrison’s harassment.
“For Will to have disguised his cellphone quantity as Mark’s strongly counsel he has hacked my e-mail, authorized counsel for the opposing facet in a perceived authorized dispute,” ALM VP and basic counsel Mike Dacks wrote in a letter to a detective on the Toronto Police. “Over the months of his many a whole lot of emails he alluded plenty of occasions to endeavor cyberattacks in opposition to us and this was famous in my unique report back to police.”
Primarily based on the exchanges in Bidernman’s inbox it seems these appeals to the Toronto authorities have been profitable in having Harrison barred from having the ability to enter Canada.
ALM additionally contacted a detective in Harrison’s dwelling county in North Carolina. However when the native police paid a go to to Harrison’s dwelling to comply with up on the harassment complaints, Harrison fled out his again porch, injuring himself after leaping off the second-story deck.
It’s unclear if the police ever succeeded in interviewing Harrison in response to the harassment complaints from ALM. The Raleigh police officer contacted by ALM didn’t reply to requests for info. However the go to from the native cops solely appeared to embolden and anger Harrison much more, and Biderman’s emails point out the harassment continued after this incident.
HUMAN DECOYS
Then in August 2012, the previous intercourse employee turned blogger and activist Maggie McNeill printed screenshots from an inner system that Ashley Madison used known as the “Human Decoy Interface,” which was a elaborate means of describing a system constructed to handle phony feminine accounts on the service.
The screenshots appeared to indicate that a fantastic many feminine accounts have been in actual fact bots designed to usher in paying clients. Ashley Madison was all the time free to hitch, however customers needed to pay in the event that they wished to speak straight with different customers.
Though Harrison had been fired practically a yr earlier, Biderman’s leaked emails present that Harrison’s entry to Ashley Madison’s inner instruments wasn’t revoked till after the screenshots have been posted on-line and the corporate started reviewing which worker accounts had entry to the Human Decoy Interface.
“Who or what’s asdfdfsda@asdf.com?,” Biderman requested, after being despatched a listing of 9 e-mail addresses.
“It seems to be the e-mail handle Will used for his profiles,” the IT director replied.
“And his entry was by no means shut off till at present?,” requested the corporate’s basic counsel Mike Dacks.
TRUTH BOMBS
Biderman’s leaked emails counsel that Harrison stopped his harassment marketing campaign someday after 2012. A decade later, KrebsOnSecurity sought to trace down and interview Harrison. Discovering no one at his former addresses and cellphone numbers in North Carolina, KrebsOnSecurity wound up talking with Will’s stepmother, Tena Nauheim, who lives with Will’s dad in Northern Virginia.
Nauheim shortly dropped two massive reality bombs after patiently listening to my spiel about why I used to be calling and on the lookout for Mr. Harrison. The primary was that Will was introduced up Jewish, though he didn’t observe the religion: A neighborhood rabbi and buddy of the household gave the service at Will’s funeral in 2014.
Nauheim additionally shared that her stepson had killed himself in 2014, taking pictures himself within the head with a handgun. Will’s mom found his physique.
“Will dedicated suicide in March 2014,” Nauheim shared. “I’ve heard all these tales you simply talked about. Will was severely mentally sick. He was most likely as near a sociopath as I can think about anybody being. He was additionally a paranoid schizophrenic who wouldn’t take his remedy.”
William B. Harrison died on March 5, 2014, practically 16 months earlier than The Influence Staff introduced they’d hacked Ashley Madison.
Nauheim mentioned she continuously felt bodily threatened when Will was round. However she had hassle believing that her stepson was a raging anti-Semite. She additionally mentioned she thought the timing of Will’s suicide successfully dominated him out as a suspect within the 2015 Ashley Madison hack.
“Contemplating the date of dying, I’m undecided if he’s your man,” Nauheim supplied towards the top of our dialog.
[There is one silver lining to Will Harrison’s otherwise sad tale: His widow has since remarried, and her new husband agreed to adopt their son as his own.]
ANALYSIS
Does Harrison’s premature dying rule him out as a suspect, as his stepmom urged? This stays an open query. In a parting e-mail to Biderman in late 2012, Harrison signed his actual identify and mentioned he was leaving, however not going away.
“So good luck, I’m positive we’ll speak once more quickly, however for now, I’ve acquired higher issues within the oven,” Harrison wrote. “Simply bear in mind I outsmarted you final time and I’ll outsmart you and out maneuver you this time too, by maintaining myself far far-off from the motion and simply having fun with the sideline view, cheering for the opposition.”
Nothing within the leaked Biderman emails means that Ashley Madison did a lot to revamp the safety of its pc methods within the wake of Harrison’s departure and subsequent marketing campaign of harassment — other than eradicating an administrator account of his a yr after he’d already left the corporate.
KrebsOnSecurity discovered nothing in Harrison’s intensive area historical past suggesting he had any actual malicious hacking abilities. However given the clientele that usually employed his abilities — the grownup leisure trade — it appears possible Harrison was no less than conversant at the hours of darkness arts of “Black search engine optimisation,” which entails utilizing underhanded or else downright unlawful strategies to recreation search engine outcomes.
Armed with such expertise, it might not have been tough for Harrison to have labored out a solution to keep entry to working administrator accounts at Ashley Madison. If that in actual fact did occur, it might have been trivial for him to promote or give these credentials to another person.
Or to one thing else. Like Nazi teams. As KrebsOnSecurity reported final yr, within the six months main as much as the July 2015 hack, Ashley Madison and Biderman turned a frequent topic of derision throughout a number of neo-Nazi web sites.
On Jan. 14, 2015, a member of the neo-Nazi discussion board Stormfront posted a full of life thread about Ashley Madison within the basic dialogue space titled, “Jewish owned courting web site selling adultery.”
On July 3, 2015, Andrew Anglin, the editor of the alt-right publication Every day Stormer, posted excerpts about Biderman from a narrative titled, “Jewish Hyper-Sexualization of Western Tradition,” which referred to Biderman because the “Jewish King of Infidelity.”
On July 10, a mocking montage of Biderman pictures with racist captions was posted to the extremist web site Vanguard Information Community, as a part of a thread known as “Jews normalize sexual perversion.”
Some readers have urged that the information leaked by the Influence Staff may have initially been stolen by Harrison. However that timeline doesn’t add up given what we all know in regards to the hack. For one factor, the monetary transaction information leaked from Ashley Madison present costs up till mid-2015. Additionally, the ultimate message within the archive of Biderman’s stolen emails was dated July 7, 2015 — nearly two weeks earlier than the Influence Staff would announce their hack.
Whoever hacked Ashley Madison clearly wished to disrupt the corporate as a enterprise, and shame its CEO because the endgame. The Influence Staff’s intrusion struck simply as Ashley Madison’s father or mother was getting ready go public with an preliminary public providing (IPO) for traders. Additionally, the hackers acknowledged that whereas they stole all emplyee emails, they have been solely excited about leaking Biderman’s.
Additionally, the Influence Staff needed to know that ALM would by no means adjust to their calls for to dismantle Ashley Madison and Established Males. In 2014, ALM reported revenues of $115 million. There was little likelihood the corporate was going to close down a few of its greatest cash machines.
Therefore, it seems the Influence Staff’s purpose all alongside was to create prodigious quantities of drama and rigidity by asserting the hack of a significant dishonest web site, after which let that drama play out over the following few months as hundreds of thousands of uncovered Ashley Madison customers freaked out and have become the targets of extortion assaults and public shaming.
After the Influence Staff launched Biderman’s e-mail archives, a number of media retailers pounced on salacious exchanges in these messages as supposed proof he had carried on a number of affairs. Biderman resigned as CEO of Ashley Madison on Aug. 28, 2015.
Complicating issues additional, it seems a couple of malicious celebration might have gained entry to Ashley’s Madison’s community in 2015 or presumably earlier. Cyber intelligence agency Intel 471 recorded a sequence of posts by a consumer with the deal with “Brutium” on the Russian-language cybercrime discussion board Antichat between 2014 and 2016.
Brutium routinely marketed the sale of huge, hacked databases, and on Jan. 24, 2015, this consumer posted a thread providing to promote information on 32 million Ashley Madison customers. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a indication whether or not anybody bought the knowledge. Brutium’s profile has since been faraway from the Antichat discussion board.
I understand this ending could also be unsatisfying for a lot of readers, as it’s for me. The story I wrote in 2015 in regards to the Ashley Madison hack remains to be the most important scoop I’ve printed right here (when it comes to visitors), but it stays maybe the only most irritating investigation I’ve ever pursued. However my hunch is that there’s nonetheless extra to this story that has but to unfold.
