[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, once I obtained a message by way of the contact type 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 Impact Team was ready to leak knowledge 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 Impact Team.
The message included hyperlinks to recordsdata containing extremely delicate info, together with snippets of leaked consumer account knowledge, maps of inner AshleyMadison firm servers, worker community account info, firm checking account knowledge and wage info.
A grasp worker contact checklist was among the many paperwork leaked that night. Helpfully, it included the cellular phone 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 believe is the culprit, and unfortunately that may have triggered this mass publication,” Biderman informed me on July 19, simply minutes earlier than I revealed the primary identified public report concerning the breach. “I’ve got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials. It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services.”
On Aug 18, 2015, the Impact Team posted a “Time’s up!” message on-line, together with hyperlinks to 60 gigabytes of Ashley Madison consumer knowledge. The knowledge leak led to the general public shaming and extortion of many Ashley Madison customers, and to at the least two suicides. Many different customers misplaced their jobs or their marriages. To at the present time, no one has been charged within the hack, and extremely Ashley Madison stays a thriving firm.
THE CHAOS MAKER
The former worker that Biderman undoubtedly had in thoughts on July 19, 2015 was William Brewster Harrison, a self-described professional in SEO (search engine optimisation) tips which can be designed to assist web sites enhance their rankings for varied key phrases in Google and different serps.
It is obvious that Harrison was Biderman’s prime suspect instantly after the breach grew to become public as a result of — along with releasing knowledge 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 varied grownup manufacturers on-line, and it’s clear that one in every of his roles was creating and sustaining feminine profiles on Ashley Madison, and creating blogs that had been made to appear to be they had been written by ladies who’d simply joined Ashley Madison.
A selfie that William B. Harrison posted to his Facebook web page in 2013 exhibits 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 is much less clear is whether or not anybody at ALM ever carried out a fundamental background test on Harrison earlier than hiring him. Because if that they had, the outcomes nearly actually would have given them pause. Virginia prosecutors charged the younger 20-something Harrison with a collection of misdemeanors, together with trespassing, illegal entry, drunk in public, and making obscene telephone calls.
In 2008, North Carolina authorities charged Harrison with prison extortion, a case that was transferred to South Carolina earlier than in the end being dismissed. In December 2009, Harrison confronted fees of false imprisonment, fees that had been additionally dropped by the native district lawyer.
By the time Ashley Madison formally employed him, Harrison’s life was falling aside. His fence enterprise had failed, and he’d simply filed for chapter. Also, his marriage had soured, and after a brand new arrest for driving beneath the affect, he was at risk of getting divorced, dropping entry to his son, and/or going to jail.
It additionally appears seemingly that no one at ALM bothered to have a look at the handfuls of domains registered to Harrison’s varied Vistomail.com e-mail addresses, as a result of had they accomplished so that they seemingly would have seen 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 ultimately. Some of those web sites included content material that defamed and doxed executives, akin to bash-a-business[.]com, google-your-business[.]com, contact-a-ceo[.]com, lowes-is-a-cancer[.]com (in line with Harrison, the house enchancment chain as soon as employed his spouse).
A background test 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 a variety of works, akin to “Slim Thug — I Run — Remix Spoof,” that are replete with menacing phrases for unnamed company executives:
[HOOK]
I browse cyberspace all evening n day (the net love thug)
cuz I nonetheless browse cyberspace all evening n day
yuhh I sort for my thoughts, received good for my ego
nonetheless operating 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
if you happen to received the precise dough!
suppose the outcomes are faux? sucka Google ME
smarter than executives, greater 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, received 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’ll be able to prolly odor the jealousy
by way of your LCD display
if you happen to 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 Net til im six ft beneath
I’m a depart my mark — no purpose to marvel
(Yea Yea)
Some of the anti-corporate rhymes busted by Harrison’s hacker/rapper alter ego “Chaos Dog.” Image: Archive.org.
The similar theme seems in one other rap (“The Hacker Backstage”) penned by Harrison’s rapper alter ego — “Chaos Dog:”
…this hacker was born to put in writing
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
nicely, I’ve received an answer
It’s known as good ol’ common retribution
file chapter, boycott you want Boston colonists
Corporate America cant cease this Eminem fashion columnist
2pac would have honored my fashion
Im the subsequent era of hacker inspiration
Americans don’t need a company nation
All that DOW Jones shit is a dying sensation
In addition to pimping Ashley Madison with faux profiles and phony consumer blogs, it seems Harrison additionally went after the corporate’s enemies through the transient time he was an worker. As famous in Part 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 had been topic to an unrelenting marketing campaign of on-line harassment and blackmail. It now seems these assaults had been perpetrated by Harrison, who despatched emails from completely 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
Things 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 seemingly performed a serious function. According to Harrison, it was as a result of he had expressed some ethical reservations with sure facets of his duties, though he was not particular on that time and none of this could possibly be confirmed.
Shortly after Harrison was fired, the corporate’s executives started noticing that Google was auto-completing the phrases “Jew” and “Jewish” every time somebody looked for Biderman’s identify. The outcomes returned when one accepted Google’s really useful search on the time crammed the primary web page with hyperlinks to Stormfront, a far-right, neo-Nazi hate group. The firm strongly suspected somebody was utilizing underhanded search engine optimisation strategies to slander and assault its CEO.
In July 2022, KrebsOnSecurity revealed a retrospective on the 2015 Ashley Madison breach which discovered that Biderman had turn out to be the topic of accelerating ire from members of Stormfront and different extremists teams within the years main as much as the hack. According 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 2012 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 collection Shark Tank. Through Cuban, Ashley Madison appealed their case to each Google and to the Anti-Defamation League, however neither was apparently ready or keen to assist.
Also in early January 2012, Biderman and different Ashley Madison executives discovered themselves inundated with nameless Vistomail.com emails that had been replete with profanity and slurs in opposition to Jews. Although he used faux 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 taking part in basketball for a college workforce. 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 telephone calls to Ashley Madison executives. In one incident in March 2012, Harrison known as the corporate’s former director of Human Resources utilizing a caller ID spoofing service to make it appear to be he was calling from contained in the constructing.
ALM’s attorneys contacted the Toronto police in response to Harrison’s harassment.
“For Will to have disguised his phone number as Mark’s strongly suggest he has hacked my email, legal counsel for the opposing side in a perceived legal 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 hundreds of emails he alluded a number of times to undertaking cyberattacks against us and this was noted in my original report to police.”
Based on the exchanges in Bidernman’s inbox it seems these appeals to the Toronto authorities had 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. But 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 is 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. But 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 revealed screenshots from an inner system that Ashley Madison used known as the “Human Decoy Interface,” which was a elaborate manner of describing a system constructed to handle phony feminine accounts on the service.
The screenshots appeared to indicate that an amazing many feminine accounts had been actually bots designed to herald paying prospects. Ashley Madison was at all times free to hitch, however customers needed to pay in the event that they wished to speak straight with different customers.
Although Harrison had been fired almost a 12 months earlier, Biderman’s leaked emails present that Harrison’s entry to Ashley Madison’s inner instruments wasn’t revoked till after the screenshots had been posted on-line and the corporate started reviewing which worker accounts had entry to the Human Decoy Interface.
“Who or what is asdfdfsda@asdf.com?,” Biderman requested, after being despatched a listing of 9 e-mail addresses.
“It appears to be the email address Will used for his profiles,” the IT director replied.
“And his access was never shut off until today?,” requested the corporate’s basic counsel Mike Dacks.
TRUTH BOMBS
Biderman’s leaked emails recommend that Harrison stopped his harassment marketing campaign someday after 2012. A decade later, KrebsOnSecurity sought to trace down and interview Harrison. Finding no one at his former addresses and telephone 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 huge reality bombs after patiently listening to my spiel about why I used to be calling and in search of Mr. Harrison. The first was that Will was introduced up Jewish, though he didn’t observe the religion: A neighborhood rabbi and pal of the household gave the service at Will’s funeral in 2014.
Nauheim additionally shared that her stepson had killed himself in 2014, capturing himself within the head with a handgun. Will’s mom found his physique.
“Will committed suicide in March 2014,” Nauheim shared. “I’ve heard all those stories you just mentioned. Will was severely mentally ill. He was probably as close to a sociopath as I can imagine anyone being. He was also a paranoid schizophrenic who wouldn’t take his medication.”
William B. Harrison died on March 5, 2014, almost 16 months earlier than The Impact Team introduced they’d hacked Ashley Madison.
Nauheim mentioned she continually felt bodily threatened when Will was round. But 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.
“Considering the date of death, I’m not sure if he’s your guy,” Nauheim provided 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 loss of life rule him out as a suspect, as his stepmom instructed? 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 sure we’ll talk again soon, but for now, I’ve got better things in the oven,” Harrison wrote. “Just remember I outsmarted you last time and I will outsmart you and out maneuver you this time too, by keeping myself far far away from the action and just enjoying 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 programs within the wake of Harrison’s departure and subsequent marketing campaign of harassment — aside from eradicating an administrator account of his a 12 months 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. But given the clientele that usually employed his abilities — the grownup leisure trade — it appears seemingly Harrison was at the least conversant at midnight arts of “Black SEO,” which entails utilizing underhanded or else downright unlawful strategies to sport search engine outcomes.
Armed with such expertise, it might not have been troublesome for Harrison to have labored out a option to preserve entry to working administrator accounts at Ashley Madison. If that actually 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 12 months, within the six months main as much as the July 2015 hack, Ashley Madison and Biderman grew to become 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 dating website promoting adultery.”
On July 3, 2015, Andrew Anglin, the editor of the alt-right publication Daily Stormer, posted excerpts about Biderman from a narrative titled, “Jewish Hyper-Sexualization of Western Culture,” which referred to Biderman because the “Jewish King of Infidelity.”
On July 10, a mocking montage of Biderman photographs with racist captions was posted to the extremist web site Vanguard News Network, as a part of a thread known as “Jews normalize sexual perversion.”
Some readers have instructed that the info leaked by the Impact Team may have initially been stolen by Harrison. But that timeline doesn’t add up given what we all know concerning the hack. For one factor, the monetary transaction information leaked from Ashley Madison present fees up till mid-2015. Also, the ultimate message within the archive of Biderman’s stolen emails was dated July 7, 2015 — nearly two weeks earlier than the Impact Team would announce their hack.
Whoever hacked Ashley Madison clearly needed to disrupt the corporate as a enterprise, and shame its CEO because the endgame. The Impact Team’s intrusion struck simply as Ashley Madison’s father or mother was making ready go public with an preliminary public providing (IPO) for traders. Also, the hackers said that whereas they stole all emplyee emails, they had been solely serious about leaking Biderman’s.
Also, the Impact Team needed to know that ALM would by no means adjust to their calls for to dismantle Ashley Madison and Established Men. 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.
Hence, it seems the Impact Team’s purpose all alongside was to create prodigious quantities of drama and stress by saying the hack of a serious dishonest web site, after which let that drama play out over the subsequent few months as thousands and thousands of uncovered Ashley Madison customers freaked out and grew to become the targets of extortion assaults and public shaming.
After the Impact Team 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 multiple malicious occasion might have gained entry to Ashley’s Madison’s community in 2015 or presumably earlier. Cyber intelligence agency Intel 471 recorded a collection 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 enormous, hacked databases, and on Jan. 24, 2015, this consumer posted a thread providing to promote knowledge on 32 million Ashley Madison customers. However, there isn’t a indication whether or not anybody bought the data. 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 concerning the Ashley Madison hack remains to be the largest scoop I’ve revealed right here (by way of visitors), but it stays maybe the only most irritating investigation I’ve ever pursued. But my hunch is that there’s nonetheless extra to this story that has but to unfold.