Thursday, August 27, 2015

Researcher claims he's found the Ashley Madison hacker

from fortune 

 


It could be Twitter user Thadeus Zu.

The Ashley Madison hack, which posted the information over 32 million accounts, may have been performed by the Twitter user with the name “Thadeus Zu,” according to a security researcher.
Brian Krebs, the researcher, pointed to the account’s owner based on past postings to the social media side and other Twitter information that led him to believe he’s part of the “Impact Team” responsible for the attack. But Thadeus Zu has spoken out against the accusations, tweeting, “They’re eyeballing the wrong dude here, man,” according to the publication.
Krebs has targeted Zu for numerous reasons, including citing information that Zu has hacked government sites in the past and has played AC/DC songs once the hack was completed. The Ashley Madison hack, meanwhile, had the song “Thunderstruck” played from the company’s computers.
He also appeared to tweet links to the huge data dumps from the hacks, before they were picked up by the mainstream media, according to Krebs. Krebs said his initial interest in the account had come about because it posted a link to Ashley Madison source data soon after it was released.
“Thadeus Zu — whoever and wherever he is in real life — may not have been directly involved in the Ashley Madison hack; he claims in several tweets that he was not part of the hack, but then in countless tweets he uses the royal “We” when discussing the actions and motivations of the Impact Team,” according to Krebs.
“But one thing is clear: If Zu wasn’t involved in the hack, he almost certainly knows who was,” added Krebs.
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Sunday, August 23, 2015

After California Music Festival, Shooting Leaves 1 Dead, 7 Injured

from nbc
by 
A gunman shot eight people and killed one early Sunday morning after a sprawling music festival in California that featured Waka Flocka Flame, Tech N9ne and dozens of other performers, Modesto police said Sunday.
The shooting occurred outside a warehouse a few miles from the festival, in an industrial section of Modesto, the police said in a release.
"While attendees were waiting to get into the party, a black male adult walked into the parking lot and started shooting." police said.
The gunman was not identified, and it was unclear why he opened fire.
Zachary McGee, 25, died at the hospital, the release said. Two unidentified victims — a 23-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man — remained in critical and serious but stable condition, while five others were treated and released.
The concert, called the X Fest, bills itself as the "biggest party" in California's Central Valley. This was its 15th year, and its lineup included 120 bands on 13 stages across 15 city blocks, drawing 20,000 people, according to the festival's Facebook page.
Festival promoter Chris Ricci told NBC News the party was an "unsanctioned" and "unpermitted" event, and that it was not officially connected to X Fest.
"Some people that attended the event attended the party," he said. "It's horrible and it's sad, but this definitely had nothing to do with X Fest." 
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Friday, August 21, 2015

Welcome to the terrifying post-Ashley Madison Internet

from washingtonpost  


 


(Photo illustration by Carl Court/Getty Images)
In the post-Target, post-Home Depot, post-OPM world, we’re no longer shocked or scandalized by even the largest corporate hacks.
But we’ve never seen a breach even half as ruinous or as imminently destructive as the one that just exposed 36 million possible adulterers to a gawking public.
The trove of hacked user data from Ashley Madison — unlike virtually every large-scale hack before it — didn’t just involve e-mail addresses or credit card numbers or other things one can fix with a phone call to the bank. It included full names, birth dates, marital statuses and, perhaps most damningly, intimate details about its users’ kinks and sexual preferences — the sort of dirt that, depending on your circumstances, can easily become grounds forfiring, divorce, jail time or even execution.
In a few keystrokes, an anonymous, ideologically motivated group managed to torch the careers, friendships and marriages of millions of people. That’s not “vandalism,” to use a term that Ashley Madison itself has lately resorted to.
That’s terror. And it should terrify you.

(Reddit)
None of this is a revelation, of course: Much like terrorist events of other, more violent sorts, the Ashley Madison hack hasn’t exposed anything we didn’t already know. Hackers have managed more than 75 high-profile, large-scale corporate breaches in the past 10 years. If you somehow survived the past decade believing yourself immune, you’re either some sort of security expert or you live in an Internet-free commune.
But post-Ashley Madison, the Internet feels fundamentally less safe than it did before. You can smell the tang of anxiety in the panicked rush to build tools that can search the hacked data; in the crunch of people flooding 4chan and Reddit and Pirate Bay for more and dirtier details on the hack; in the bottomless gloating of the people who know, with self-righteous certainty, that they won’t be in it.
Has the Ashley Madison hack ruined the Internet?
Play Video1:30
Hackers say they have posted the personal details of millions of people registered with the adultery website Ashley Madison. But this massive data breach could have widespread implications on how we all use the Internet. The Post's Caitlin Dewey explains. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)
And it’s not just Ashley Madison that scares us, by any means: God knows we all have skeletons in our digital closets, little secrets and embarrassments and indiscretions that we’ve unthinkingly entrusted to distant corporate servers that could also be hacked any day.
“The current business world,” Ashley Madison said, ominously, when news of the hack first broke, “has proven to be one in which no company’s online assets are safe from cyber-vandalism.”
That includes the companies that store your e-mails and your text messages; the ones you use to track your schedule and your finances; the ones where you shop and watch porn and fill your prescriptions.
Think, for a moment, of your most embarrassing secret, the one that would destroy you if it appeared in a public-facing database that your neighbors and co-workers and cousins could search. Is there any trace of that anywhere on any server?
Are you absolutely sure?
“If understood in more abstract terms,” the Awl’s John Herman foretold Tuesday, “this hack has the potential to alter anyone’s relationship with the devices and apps and services they use every day … It’s a powerful reminder of the impossibility of perfect privacy.”

And yet, we’ve had reminders — dozens of reminders, hundreds of reminders, almost as many reminders as we’ve had incentives to give up this sort of private data. Corporate America has cleverly engineered a world where surrendering is frictionless, convenient, ubiquitous: It’s holding onto our privacy that’s difficult. In practical terms, for instance, a post-Ashley wake-up call would entail deleting every app that tracks personal data, from Fitbit to Mint to Google Maps; writing only pen-and-ink letters; and scrubbing oneself from the social Web.
In other words, you’d have to forsake modern life entirely. And given the certain agony and difficulty of that — versus the vague, future possibility of a life-upending hack — I suspect most people will carry on as if nothing ever happened.
Something did happen, though, and it will continue to happen over the course of the next few months: Even as I type this, divorce lawyers are salivating over a potential influx of cases and Army investigators are hunting ethics-code violators down. On Reddit, one of the forums where people implicated in the hack can speak anonymously, cheaters and their significant others are begging for advice about saving their most important relationships.
“I found my father’s email on the Ashley Madison dump,” one 16-year-oldwrote Wednesday. “I’m afraid to bring this topic up as I know there will be extreme consequences … What are my options?”
So even if our behavior doesn’t change post-Ashley, we’ll have to live with the knowledge, and the anxiety, that such catastrophic upsets are possible. That our data is fundamentally, perpetually unsafe. That — at any time — someone could blow it up.
The post-Ashley-Madison Internet is a paranoid, disquietous place. But don’t worry: You’ll get used to it. If you haven’t already.
Liked that? Try these:
Caitlin Dewey is The Post’s digital culture critic. Follow her on Twitter @caitlindewey or subscribe to her daily newsletter on all things Internet. (tinyletter.com/cdewey)
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Thursday, August 20, 2015

What Bernie Sanders’ Election Would Mean for Legalized Drugs

from golocalprov.com



Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Brendan Murray GoLocalProv News Team
Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders; Photo courtesy of wikipedia
Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has called America’s “War on Drugs” a failure and has promised to transform America’s drug policy if elected to the White House.
So what would that look like?
Sanders has said he plans to end the program that has spent more than $51 billion annually and more than $1 trillion since 1980, according to a report by the Drug Policy Alliance.
The independent Senator from Vermont says its time to stop spending money and resources punishing and imprisoning non-violent offenders. He’s proposed treating the underlying mental health issues that cause drug addiction and legalizing marijuana use.
“Millions of lives have been destroyed because people are in jail for nonviolent crimes,” Sanders’ campaign website reads. “For decades, we have been engaged in a failed ‘War on Drugs’ with racially-biased mandatory minimums that punish people of color unfairly. It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young Americans with a criminal record for smoking marijuana, but not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy.”
DC Track Record
Sanders’ voting record backs up his stance on drugs.  During his time on Capitol Hill, Sanders made a number of votes against the enforcement of America’s drug policies.
As a Representative in September 1998, Sanders voted against subjecting federal employees to random drug tests. He voted to legalize medical marijuana in July of 2001, and voted against military border patrol to help battle drug trafficking in September of the same year. After being elected to the Senate in 2007, Sanders voted twice to exempt industrial hemp from marijuana prohibition, once in August of 2012 and again in March of 2013.
The election of Sanders, or any candidate who backs the end of the federal War on Drugs, would be a “welcome change” to the country’s drug policy, according to Chris Brown, press secretary for Americans for Safe Access.
“It’s a failed policy,” Brown told GoLocal. “Repealing the War on Drugs would allow the public to see marijuana, and all drugs, in a nonidelogical view and allow them to analyze it for all its properties.”
Brown also said the repeal of the War on Drugs would ensure that patients who depend on the drug to treat legitimate maladies, particularly pain relief, can receive their medicine without fear of becoming an outlaw.
Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told GoLocal the criminalization of cannabis is a “disproportionate response to what is at worst, a public health issue, not a criminal justice issue.”
Armentano also said that those prosecuted for cannabis-related crimes are disproportionately minorities and young people. This can cause them to distrust government and law enforcement agencies. “This disenfranchises entire cohorts of U.S. citizens who, rather than see law enforcement agencies as protectors, see them as instruments of their oppression.”
He also responded to critics’ claims that legalization will allow teenagers and children freer access to marijuana. He said that criminalizing the substance had not proven effective, and it was time for new techniques.
“Alcohol and tobacco use in teenagers was not driven down by illegalizing these substances for adults, but by educating the target audience and imposing and enforcing age requirements,” he explained. “I don’t see why that would not work when it comes to cannabis.”
‘Not so fast’ say critics
Ron Brogan, a spokesman for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, known more commonly asD.A.R.E., told GoLocal that despite the assertion by legalization advocates that prohibition has failed, drug use is declining.
“The story that’s not really told is that the drug policing efforts in place are working,” he said. “Cocaine use is down nearly 85 percent since its peak, and drug use in general is significantly down. Prohibition is working.”
Calvina Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, echoed Brogan’s claims.
“Alcohol is legal for adults and society has done a dismal job of keeping it from our young people, and the same can be said for cigarettes,” she told GoLocal. “Advocates like to ignore that when this country really went after drugs in this country, overall drug use fell by more than 50%. That is not a failure”
Brogan also said that the prohibition of marijuana is the best way to keep drugs like marijuana from falling into the hands of children.
“When the United States government puts an age-restriction down on something like that, the message that is sent is, ‘this is not that bad,’” he said. “That it’s okay for everyone except teenagers, and that does not prove to be effective.”
Fay also addressed claims that drug enforcement laws are used to target minorities and young people. She admitted that there are times when laws are used to target those groups, but said drug laws are not to blame.
“If you look at who is and isn’t in prison, you’ll see that there are not thousands of minorities rotting away in prison because they had a small amount of marijuana,” she said. “That’s a myth.”

Related Slideshow: The Highest Marijuana Prices in 2015 in New England by State

Forbes.com recently released a graphic that looks at how much an ounce of marijuana costs in every state in America, as well as the District of Columbia. The national average is $324.
Below is a look at where New England states fall in the rankings, as well as where marijuana is the most expensive and least expensive nationally. 
PrevNext

#6 Maine

$305
The Pine Tree State is 19 dollars below the national average. 
That is the 38th highest in the country. 

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The Ashley Madison List






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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The Ashley Madison hack proves it: Everyone lies about their birthdays

from washingtonpost




   
The amount of information released by the Ashley Madison hackers is really quite staggering: Tens of millions of emails, locations, pick-up lines and even more personal data. And, of course, birthdates.
You'd expect Ashley Madison to ask for a birthdate. After all, it needs to know that everyone participating is over the age of 18 and probably wants to get a sense for how old people actually are. And, as you'd also expect, people gave Ashley Madison tons and tons of fake birthdates.
There are over 36 million different birthdates registered with the site. And, if everyone is telling the truth, one out of every 12 Ashley Madison members was born on New Year's Day.
January 1st is by far the most popular day that members said they were born, presumably because the site asked visitors to pick month, day and year and people only bothered to change the year. Those who did change the month and day, though, often picked the same number for each: February 2, March 3, April 4. After all, it's as easy as hitting 6-tab-6 on most computers.
Oh, but some of the truly romantic people looking to cheat on their wives got a little more creative: 124,000 said they were born on Valentine's Day.
Other patterns hold in both the dates and the years that people offered up. Multiples of five were common -- 1965, May 20. The most common year that people gave was 1978, by a wide margin. More people said they were born in 1978 than said they were born on January 1. The most common decade for people to say they were born was the 1980s, the children of the "Me Generation." Or, at least, older people that want people to think they're that young.
We'll add an important caveat. We can't necessarily extrapolate from this data to web users on the whole. After all, the entire site is predicated on deceit.
Philip Bump writes about politics for The Fix. He is based in New York City.






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Monday, August 17, 2015

Teen Choice Awards 2015 winners and highlights

from cbsnews

CBS/AP  August 17, 2015, 7:58 AM


43 Photos
From left, Actors Vanessa Ray, Lucy Hale, Janel Parrish, Shay Mitchell, Ashley Benson and Ian Harding accept the Choice TV: Drama Show for 'Pretty Little Liars' onstage during the Teen Choice Awards 2015 at the USC Galen Center on Aug. 16, 2015, in Los Angeles.
 
 KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES
Last Updated Aug 17, 2015 8:51 AM EDT
The 17th Teen Choice Awards threw its full support behind the hit series "Empire,"honored late "Furious 7" star Paul Walker and paid homage to a respected elder: Britney Spears.
The two-hour teen celebration, broadcast live Sunday night, kicked off with a victory lap for the weekend box-office hit "Straight Outta Compton." Ice Cube and the young stars of the N.W.A biopic, which earned an estimated $56.1 million over the weekend, welcomed the young crowd to Los Angeles' Galen Center.
42 PHOTOS

Teen Choice Awards 2015

Christopher "Ludacris" Bridges, the rapper and "Furious 7" co-star, was one of three hosts, alongside "Jane the Virgin" star Gina Rodriguez and actor Josh Peck. Bridges' film, one of year's biggest big-screen hits, was one of the night's top winners, winning best action movie and best actor in an action-adventure for the late Paul Walker.
"Paul Walker is here in spirit with us," said Vin Diesel, a star in the street racing franchise. He applauded a "special, special" teen in the crowd: Walker's daughter Meadow.
The Teen Choice Awards spread awards across movies, music, TV, fashion, sports and digital media, celebrating the favorites - from Channing Tatum to Wiz Khalifa to Stephen Curry (all winners Sunday) - of one of media's most powerful demographics.
As a pop star, Spears was a regular at the Teen Choice Awards, collecting its trademark trophies - surfboards - many times over the years, including its version of a lifetime achievement award in 2009.
On Sunday, Spears, her blonde hair partially dyed blue and purple, was honored for being a style icon. She dedicated the award to her sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James, and niece Lexie, who were in the audience.
The Teen Choice Awards' new reigning powerhouse, One Direction, landed eight awards, bringing their "lifetime" total to 23. The British boy band, currently on tour, accepted the awards in a taped video.
The hip-hop drama "Empire" won breakout TV show and provided one of the show's most memorable moments. While Jussie Smollett and Yazz performed "You're So Beautiful," a song from the series, the show's Gabourey Sidibe made a surprise cameo, exuberantly dancing among the back-up dancers.
Ellen DeGeneres won for best comedian. Adding a Teen Choice Award to her People's Choice Award, DeGeneres requested awards from other age groups: the elderly and babies.
Several awards went to "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1," including best actor in a sci-fi or fantasy for Josh Hutcherson. He reflected on the end of the franchise, with this fall's "Mockingjay, Part 2," like a coming graduation.
"'Hunger Games' has been a huge part of my life for almost five years now. It's coming to an end and it's really sad," said Hutcherson. "So if we want to cry together, we can do that because it breaks my heart."
Check out the list of winners below:
MOVIES
Choice Movie: Action/Adventure - "Furious 7"
Choice Movie Actor: Action/Adventure -Paul Walker, "Furious 7"
Choice Movie Actress: Action/Adventure - Shailene Woodley, "Insurgent"
Choice Movie: Sci-Fi/Fantasy - "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1"
Choice Movie Actor: Sci-Fi/Fantasy -Josh Hutcherson, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1"
Choice Movie Actress: Sci-Fi/Fantasy -Jennifer Lawrence, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1"
Choice Movie: Drama - If I Stay
Choice Movie Actor: Drama - Scott Eastwood, "The Longest Ride"
Choice Movie Actress: Drama -Chloë Grace Moretz, "If I Stay"
Choice Movie: Comedy - "Pitch Perfect 2"
Choice Movie Actor: Comedy - Skylar Astin, "Pitch Perfect 2"
Choice Movie Actress: Comedy - Anna Kendrick, "Pitch Perfect 2"
Choice Movie Villain - Bella Thorne, "The Duff"
Choice Movie Scene Stealer - Chris Evans, Avengers: Age of Ultron Choice Movie Breakout Star - Cara Delevingne, Paper Towns Choice Movie Chemistry - Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow, Pitch Perfect 2
Choice Movie Liplock - Shailene Woodley and Theo James, "Insurgent"
Choice Movie Hissy Fit - Anna Kendrick, "Pitch Perfect 2"
Choice Summer Movie - "Paper Towns"
Choice Summer Movie Star: Male - Channing Tatum, Magic Mike XXLChoice Summer Movie Star: Female - Cara Delevingne, Paper Towns
TELEVISION
Choice TV Show: Drama - "Pretty Little Liars"
Choice TV Actor: Drama - Ian Harding, "Pretty Little Liars"
Choice TV Actress: Drama -Lucy Hale, "Pretty Little Liars"
Choice TV Show: Sci-Fi/Fantasy - "The Vampire Diaries"
Choice TV Actor: Sci-Fi/Fantasy - Jared Padalecki, "Supernatural"
Choice TV Actress: Sci-Fi/Fantasy - Nina Dobrev, "The Vampire Diaries"
Choice TV Show: Comedy - "The Big Bang Theory"
Choice TV Actor: Comedy -Ross Lynch, "Austin & Ally"
Choice TV Actress: Comedy - Lea Michele, "Glee"
Choice TV: Animated Show - "Family Guy"
Choice TV: Reality Show - "The Voice"
Choice TV Villain - "A," "Pretty Little Liars"{
Choice TV: Scene Stealer -Dylan O'Brien, "Teen Wolf"
Choice TV: Breakout Star -Grant Gustin, "The Flash"
Choice TV: Breakout Show - Empire
Choice TV: Chemistry - Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins, "Supernatural"
Choice TV: Liplock- Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder, "The Vampire Diaries"
Choice Summer TV Show - Teen Wolf
Choice Summer TV Star: Male - Tyler Blackburn, "Pretty Little Liars"
Choice Summer TV Star: Female -Ashley Benson, "Pretty Little Liars"
MUSIC
Choice Male Artist - Ed Sheeran
Choice Female Artist - Demi Lovato
Choice Music Group: Male -One Direction Choice Music Group: Female -Fifth Harmony
Choice R&B/Hip-Hop Artist - Nicki Minaj
Choice Country Artist -Carrie Underwood
Choice Song: Female Artist -Ariana Grande, "One Last Time"
Choice Song: Male Artist -Ed Sheeran, "Thinking Out Loud"
Choice Song: Group -One Direction, "Steal My Girl"
Choice International Artist - Super Junior
Choice Country Song - Carrie Underwood, "Little Toy Guns"
Choice R&B/Hip-Hop Song - Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth, "See You Again"
Choice Rock Song -Hozier, "Take Me To Church"
Choice Love Song - One Direction, "Night Changes"
Choice Break-Up Song -Taylor Swift featuring Kendrick Lamar, "Bad Blood"
Choice Party Song - One Direction, "No Control"
Choice Music Breakout Artist - Little Mix
Choice Music: Next Big Thing - Bea Miller
Choice Music: Collaboration- Taylor Swift featuring Kendrick Lamar, "Bad Blood"
Choice Song from a Movie or TV Show -Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth, "See You Again," from Furious 7
Choice Summer Song - Fifth Harmony featuring Kid Ink, "Worth It"
Choice Summer Music Star: Female - Taylor Swift
Choice Summer Music Star: Male- Ed Sheeran
Choice Summer Music Star: Group- One Direction
Choice Summer Tour - One Direction, "On the Road Again Tour"
SPORTS
Choice Male Athlete - Stephen Curry
Choice Female Athlete - The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team
OTHER
Choice Female Hottie - Fifth Harmony
Choice Male Hottie- One Direction
Choice Comedian - Ellen DeGeneres
Choice Selfie Taker -One Direction
Choice Dancer- Chloe Lukasiak
Choice Model - Kendall Jenner
Choice Web Star: Female -Bethany Mota
Choice Web Star: Male -Cameron Dallas
Choice Web Star: Comedy -Colleen Ballinger ("Miranda Sings")
Choice Web Star: Music -Shawn Mendes
Choice Web Star: Fashion/Beauty - Zoe Sugg ("Zoella")
Social Media King - Justin Bieber
Social Media Queen - Caitlyn Jenner
Choice Twit -Taylor Swift
Choice Viner -Cameron Dallas
Choice Instagrammer -Ariana Grande
Choice YouTuber - Kian Lawley ("SuperKian13")
Choice Fandom - #ELF
CBS/AP
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