Report: Joe Biden’s Son Hunter’s Email Linked to Ashley Madison Account

[Agschmid]

[center][/center]

An email account belonging to Hunter Biden was used to register an account on the extramarital affair website Ashley Madison, according to a report on Breitbart News.

Breitbart, which last week published a deeply-flawed and racist hit piece on black activist Shaun King, claims an account with the the name “Robert Biden” was registered on the adultery website using an email address belonging to Biden. The account, allegedly discovered in the recent dump of Madison information, reportedly has Biden’s correct birth day—February 4—but lists his year of birth as 1980 (Biden was born in 1970). Below, via Breitbart, is a screenshot of the account’s information that, among other things, reveals that the purported Biden was seeking relationships where “Anything goes.”

[center][/center]

While Biden acknowledged to Breitbart that the email address belongs to him, he’s denied registering the Ashley Madison account.

“I am certain that the account in question is not mine,” he said in a statement. “This account was clearly set up by someone else without my knowledge and I first learned about the account in question from the media.”

“This is, unfortunately, not the first time that someone has used my name and identity to try to discredit me,” he added. “From my understanding through press accounts, it is very easy to set up an account without someone’s knowledge as there is no requirement that an email address be verified and I am certain that is what happened in this case.”

Source. FYI the link is Gawker not Breitbart... hit pieces everywhere.

I guess the Republicans are taking Biden's potential run seriously...

[hrmjustin]

1. I believe him.

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. I really don't care if it is or isn't him ...

the only folks I give a second thought about in this matter are those that make a living castigating others for their private conduct.

[AngryAmish]

5. I don't care.

This is nobodies business. None of it is.

[jberryhill]

20. I don't care, but I also don't believe him

The premise of being "set up" is absurd, given that the setup depends on Ashley Madison being hacked and the data exposed at some indefinite time in the future.

[Purveyor]

2. Hunter Biden: I Wasn't On Ashley Madison

By Katie Bo Williams - 08/25/15 03:39 PM EDT
Vice President Biden’s son Hunter Biden says the account using his email address on the infidelity website Ashley Madison did not belong to him.

“I am certain that the account in question is not mine,” Hunter Biden said in a statement. “This account was clearly set up by someone else without my knowledge.”

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Biden, a married father of three, is one of many political personalities whose email information was included in the massive cache of Ashley Madison user data released by hackers last week.

But the appearance of a given email address or account name in the database is not a smoking gun, experts say. Ashley Madison doesn’t authenticate email addresses when users sign up, deliberately giving users the “plausible deniability” of membership.

Biden alluded to the lack of authentication in his statement, indicating that he had been targeted in this kind of scam before.

MORE...

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/251929-hunter-biden-i-wasnt-on-ashley-madison

[nichomachus]

3. If Ashley Madison didn't verify email addresses, they have opened themselves up to a massive lawsuit

I can't think of the last time I signed up for anything on line -- even a travel list -- where I didn't get an email asking me to verify my address.

[Agschmid]

6. No kidding.

[jberryhill]

7. This includes a verified credit card

Not all Ashley Madison users went to paid status using a credit card.

This data record is typical of one which did generate charges to a credit card.

It's tough to do that with a "fake name".

[4139]

8. How can you tell credit card was use?

I must confess, I did set a account after the story broke, LOL the site is hokey bad!

[jberryhill]

11. Do you see the column at the right?

CC Email
CC Name
CC Last Use

Those fields only have data for accounts where a credit card was used.

It's what "CC" means.

[4139]

13. Ouch! Thanks!

[jberryhill]

19. Here's why Biden's explanation makes no sense

That data is in the AM database.

It would have been utterly stupid for someone to "set him up" by establishing an account on Ashley Madison in June 2014, for the purpose of having it leaked in a hack which did not occur until 2015.

It's a dumb alibi, because the premise of him being "set up" in this manner makes entirely no sense for anyone to do in June 2014.

That would be like ginning up some fake incriminating evidence and putting it into a bank safety deposit box in the name of the victim, and then sitting around waiting for someone to break into the vault some day in order to reveal it.

[4139]

24. If his CC card was stolen, where are the other bogus charges? Stealing CCsmis about cash

[jberryhill]

27. Here's what you can do

You can buy a pre-loaded debit card for cash, and the providers of those things have websites where you can establish a "name" for the card. That will involve email verification, so if you are trying to make it appear as if it is someone else's, then you are going to have to be able to access that email, do the verification and then cover your tracks.

Now, I've been involved in cases where someone broke into an email account and carried on quite an extensive and lively correspondence from it, while constantly deleting the sent and received items in order to keep the owner of the account in the dark. That has usually involved the theft of digital assets, where it was worthwhile for the crook to maintain a high degree of vigilance over the account in order to make sure the owner remained ignorant.

For something like this where, again, a hack of the AM database itself is required to "spring the trap", the story makes no sense.

[haele]

21. IRL, an identity thief opened up a credit card with just my name,birthdate, and an old address.

My bank and I figured out the information came from a 1993 application for lay-away at a store that went into bankruptcy and disappeared in the early 2000's.
I'm still dealing with Equifax, TRW, and the other credit rating services with that; the thief had maxed out the $5K card and then sold the account information to a couple other thieves who pulled similar stunts with store accounts and cell phones until my credit was totally shot; zombie debts are still out there, even after all the work I did to show that those purchases weren't mine.
There's apparently a thriving market for fake credit cards and i.d.s. And if you're addicted enough to want to hide that you're into something skeevy, it's not a big stretch to find resources to hide the fact that you're on sites like that.

Good thing about it is that after that, I became religious about saving receipts and letters.

Not saying that this was the case here, but I am pointing out that it is not difficult to use a fake id to get a credit card.

Haele

[jberryhill]

22. Yes, it can be done... now, think for a second

So, someone in 2014 ginned up a fake ID in order to appear to be Hunter Biden in the Ashley Madison user database.

A database which, until very recently, was considered to be secure.

That's a really odd way to frame someone, wouldn't you think?

I mean... what would be the point of doing that?

The only way this would make sense would be if Hunter Biden was the intended target of the entire database hack. Because you have two choices:

1. "Here's the plan. We'll set up a fake user account and credit card for Hunter Biden, and then we'll wait around until some day someone might hack the database."

or

2. "Here's the plan. We'll set up a fake user account and credit card for Hunter Biden, and then a year later we'll hack the database."

Plan 1 makes no sense.

Plan 2 means he is the intended target of the hack.

[Kali]

36. devils advocate here

might someone set up a fake account and then use the account or activity there istself to blackmail or otherwise embarrass someone. that wouldn't take a hacking - they could just direct the press to the account somehow


I tend to agree with your take, but I could also see setting people up - sort of like sending a pizza to the doofus down the street type of prank or the old "for a good time" graffiti in the bathroom stall.

[jberryhill]

39. It's kind of like the scene in Dr. Strangelove...

...where the Russian ambassador explains the existence of the Doomsday Bomb.

Then, Strangelove points out that it would only be a highly effective deterrent if the other side knows you have one.

Like the Underpants Gnomes, the part of your scenario that needs a little fleshing out is "they could just direct the press to the account somehow".

The pizza wasn't delivered, and the phone number is written on the underside of the floor tile.

[Kali]

41. well obviously I would be shitty at blackmail

I was just thinking of reasons someone might set up a fake account without needing a hack and info dump at some random time in the future...

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. a: I don't care. b: the lat/long is DC and the IP is cingular cell. n/t

[PSPS]

15. The lat/long is just derived from the provided city/state, not the IP.

[lumberjack_jeff]

49. Looks that way to me too. n/t

[PSPS]

10. Just an email address proves nothing. They don't verify email addresses. The IP is Orlando.

[jberryhill]

12. The IP is not Orlando

And the credit card was verified, per the data in the right column.

The IP is a company out of Pennsylvania that leases IP addresses to cell carriers.

[PSPS]

14. More information

Here's where I got Orlando:

http://www.infosniper.net/index.php?ip_address=166.147.118.43&map_source=1&overview_map=1&lang=1&map_type=1&zoom_level=7

I don't know if I believe the CC info in the screenshot (assuming it means "Credit Card.&quot There is no auth code or CC number. I can understand the redaction of the CC number but not the auth code. I searched the AM data and found no verified account with that email address, and everyone who paid them money with a credit card would have had a verified email address.

[jberryhill]

18. ummm.... you seem confused

First I should mention that I had a recent exposure to the dataset in the course of advising a client publishing the data, on the limited issue of copyright claims in the data (short answer, see Feist v. Rural Telephone Service), so I'm more familiar with the data fields than I care to be.

The CC last used indicates the last time a charge was made to the credit card.

There are issues, outside of my specialty, around publishing auth codes or even partial credit card numbers.

That IP address mapping tool is pointless.

The IP address block is registered to:

OrgName: Service Provider Corporation
OrgId: SPC-10
Address: PO Box 1381
City: Doylestown
StateProv: PA
PostalCode: 18901-0137
Country: US
RegDate: 1993-07-09
Updated: 2014-09-30
Comment: Please visit wirelessdataspco.org for further information about contacting us.
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/SPC-10

OrgTechHandle: WDSPC-ARIN
OrgTechName: WDSPCo Helpdesk
OrgTechPhone: [phone]
OrgTechEmail: [e-mail]
OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/WDSPC-ARIN

What they do is to lease IP addresses on a dynamic basis to cell companies. That IP address may have been used in any of dozens of locations.

http://wirelessdataspco.org/members.php

[PSPS]

26. Not confused at all

I understand the ramifications of IP assignment and its use on a Cellular network. I just said that the IP was listed as Orlando, not that Orlando was the physical location of its use.

Nevertheless, since you claim to have "recent exposure to the dataset," take a look for yourself like I did. Do you find any such account with a credit card or auth code or anything else that indicates actual payment on the account? I looked and found nothing. Feel free to post any account details that indicate otherwise.

[jberryhill]

30. There is no "CC last" timestamp for accounts which did not have a CC charge

That is the timestamp from the most recent CC transaction.

No, I am not in possession of the database. I have seen a lot of records from it and, as I said, I was advising on certain limited potential legal claims. Possession or publication of the CC or auth numbers themselves raises issues beyond those on which I was engaged to advise.

[PSPS]

32. That's my point. The screen shot may be a bogus paste-up job, especially considering its source.

[jberryhill]

38. Which bring us back to "Why?"

Hunter Biden is not a political office holder, nor is he a candidate for any political office.

If one was going to do a paste-up job, Beau Biden would be a better target, since he is not alive to deny it.

[AngryAmish]

40. Nor is that Duggar asshole.

Was he set up too?

Christ, The Junior Linda Tripp Anti-Sex League jerkoffs need to stop.

This.


Is.


Private.

[jberryhill]

44. Duggar is a public figure

I don't give a shit about Hunter Biden, and I don't see why people lower themselves to respond to crap like this.

I am simply commenting on what he said to the press. I agree with you completely that it is nobody's business, which is why it is foolish to make statement to the press about it. Apparently, Biden himself does not share the belief it is private, or he wouldn't be making a public statement - which he is under zero obligation to do - about the subject At. All.

The only statement worth making is "I'm not going to respond to that crap." But nobody compelled him to make a public statement of any kind about it, period.

[GummyBearz]

16. No

"I guess the Republicans are taking Biden's potential run seriously..."

That would be the HRC supporters apparently

[dhill926]

29. and your proof is where....

[riversedge]

31. You blaming this on Hillary supporters!!

That is a stupid accusation!!



.......................
"I guess the Republicans are taking Biden's potential run seriously..."

That would be the HRC supporters apparently

[GummyBearz]

34. They were smearing him in other threads

Not hard to connect dots.

[riversedge]

45. you connected the wrong dots.

[GummyBearz]

46. You must be right

Before announcing he will even run, much less before winning the democratic nomination, the republicans have chosen to focus attacks on Biden.

No... If Biden chooses to run, he will be a threat to the democratic front runner first. I think we know who that is.

[a kennedy]

17. D*mn, I hate the interwebs........hope my participation on DU isn't going to come back and bite me.

[AngryAmish]

42. The Junior Linda Tripp League seem to have quieted down.

Christ, what assholes.

[Mike Nelson]

28. If he's not interested in regulating people's sex lives...

...I don't care, one way or the other.

[840high]

33. I don't care what ANY

child of ANY candidate does.

[Nye Bevan]

35. Embarrassing for him, and it seems more than likely that he signed up for Ashley Madison.

But I really don't care. He's not even a candidate, he's the family member of someone who's not even a candidate yet. Just like I really didn't care about what Roger Clinton got up to.

[lpbk2713]

37. Sounds like something Karl Rove would be capable of.

Or someone just like him.

[Skidmore]

43. Swiping sideways.

Let's see how many Dems join in, because some will.

[ericson00]

47. I believe Robert, its obviously a GOP hit job, but then again, this is a prime example

why the rationale for a Joe Biden run "Hillary is so vulnerable to being polarizing," or "the GOP has nothing on Biden" is a bunch of horse shit.

[PowerToThePeople]

48. Well, my email is not on "the list"

There are times when I have been pretty slutty in my life too. Kind of amazed. But, I am cheap and stick to tinder and stuff.