(ZeroHedge) Is Your Name In The Ashley Madison Hack? Here Is One Way To Find Out

Is Your Name In The Ashley Madison Hack? Here Is One Way To Find Out

One month ago, tens of millions of men (and a few million women) were shocked to learn that as clients of cheating website Ashley Madison, whose motto is "Life is short. Have an affair", all their supposedly confidential information including names, email addresses, credit card data, personal profiles and virtually everything else, had been hacked by a group calling itself the Impact Team, which threatened release of all the client information unless Ashley Madison shuts down. There was some hope that the hackers were merely posturing or bluffing, but to the utter horror of Ashley Madison's 37 million customers - and to the sheer delight of millions of divorce attorney around the globe - last night the Impact Team did just as it threatened it would, and released a data dump with all the data in the form of a 9.7GB torrent.
The hackers' demands was simple: take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, "or it would release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails."
However, Avid Life Media, with visions of a lucrative Ashley Madison IPO still dancing in its head, decided to ignore the threats.
In retrospect this may have been a wrong move when last night, the Ashley Madison data trove made its way from the dark web where it had been circulating for the past month, to Bit Torrent, making the data available for the entire world.
The statement from Impact Team to Avid Life Media and Ashley Madison users was as follows:


Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men. We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data.

Find someone you know in here? Keep in mind the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles. See ashley madison fake profile lawsuit; 90-95% of actual users are male. Chances are your man signed up on the world's biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters.

Find yourself in here? It was ALM that failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and claim damages. Then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you'll get over it.
Ashley Madison's owners promptly responded with a statement of their own late Tuesday, condemning the cyberattack and saying they are “actively monitoring and investigating this situation” while cooperating with law-enforcement authorities in the U.S. and Canada, where the company is headquartered. "This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality. It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities,” the statement reads. “We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world."
However, by this point the damage was done.
There was some hope among the dejected users that the data released was fake however as Bloomberg reports, "the data dump appears to be “legit” and includes full names, e-mail addresses, partial credit card data and dating preferences, according to Robert Graham, chief executive officer of Errata Security, a researcher in Atlanta."
Internet security website Krebs on Security confirms as much:


I’ve now spoken with three vouched sources who all have reported finding their information and last four digits of their credit card numbers in the leaked database. Also, it occurs to me that it’s been almost exactly 30 days since the original hack. Finally, all of the accounts created at Bugmenot.com for Ashleymadison.com prior to the original breach appear to be in the leaked data set as well. I’m sure there are millions of AshleyMadison users who wish it weren’t so, but there is every indication this dump is the real deal.
So with confirmation of the data's legitimacy out of the way, the next and only question is who is on the list, and how credible is it.
Recall that, as Wired notes, the data released by the hackers includes names, addresses and phone numbers submitted by users of the site, though it’s unclear if members provided legitimate details. A sampling of the data indicates that users likely provided random numbers and addresses, but files containing credit card transactions will yield real names and addresses, unless members of the site used anonymous pre-paid cards.
Wired further adds that according to one analysis of email addresses found in the data dump also shows that some 15,000 are .mil. or .gov addresses.
Further user-level details posted on the 8ch.net website, reveal numerous users who used their employer-given email address to register at the cheating website, likely in refutation of corporate guidelines, which likely means that many former Ashley Madison users now have professional problems to look forward to in addition to the potential personal humiliation of being exposed. Among the alleged users uncovered include many JPMorgan, Bank of America, blue chip and government employees including some such as this one:
Then again, it’s important to note that Ashley Madison’s sign-up process does not require verification of an email address to set up an account, so legitimate addresses might have been hijacked and used by some members of the site.
Which brings us to the final question: just who is on the list. Early attempts to parse the full data, and present it in an easily searchable database have so far been unsuccessful, which is why those AM users concerned about the embarrassment of seeing their data appear on the internet, are urged to go straight to the source and find out whether they have been compromised there. This can be accomplished by going to the ImpactTeam's torrent website where one can find the data in one of two places: here and here.

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance: CSIQ -11.7%, TEDU -11.2%, DV -7.4%, DL -4.2%, SPLS -2.3%, LOW -1.7%

M&A news: SYT -1.3% (announces intention to divest its Flowers seeds business from its Lawn and Garden operating unit)

Select financial related names showing weakness: HSBC -1.9%, DB -0.8%, UBS -0.8% (complets SESTA procedure; expects date of payment of supplementary dividend of CHF0.25 per share on Sep 22)

Select Glencore (GLNCY) peers trading lower following Glencores earnings release last night: RIO -2.5%, BHP -1.7%

Select oil/gas related names showing early weakness: PAA -3.2%, STO -2.2%, RDS.A -1.2%, BP -1.1%, SDRL -0.9%

Other news: WWWW -4.7% (reported that it discovered an unauthorized breach of one of its computer systems on August 13, 2015, credit card information of ~93k customers may have been compromised), MNOV -3.4% (prices offering of 5,000,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $3.50 per share), FSLR -2.2% (trading lower in symp with CSIQ), JKS -1.7% (trading lower in symp with CSIQ), UDR -1.6% (announced public offering of 2.9 mln shares of common stock), OMER -1.1% (following 70%+ move higher yesterday), AER -0.5% (American Intl (AIG) confirmed will sell remaining stake in AerCap)

Analyst comments: ESPR -1.7% (downgraded to Buy at Needham), MNRO -1.2% (downgraded to Sector Weight from Overweight at KeyBanc Capital Mkts), AFL -1% (downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at BofA/Merrill
)

>>> Peabody Energy shares +15% in pre-market following a FoxNews article discuss


Peabody Energy shares +15% in pre-market following a FoxNews article discussing George Soros new ~1.03 mln share stake in the name, which was disclosed in his quarterly position filing this past Friday

--> Arch Coal (ACI) share?s also up notably, although trading is very thin so far this morning. Soros added 553k shares of ACI in Q2

Billionaire George Soros warms up to coal as stock prices hit bottom


Billionaire investor George Soros, who has demonized fossil fuels for years through his think tanks and political contributions, seems to have warmed up to Big Coal now that stocks are dirt cheap.

The left-wing hedge fund legend has raised eyebrows with major purchases of stock in two large coal companies, firms his critics say he helped bring to their knees. While buying low is the hallmark of any shrewd investor, buying coal goes against the political and environmental ideology Soros has long espoused.

“I find it very interesting that George Soros would buy shares in those coal companies,” said Daniel Simmons, vice president for Policy at the Washington DC-based free market energy group, Institute for Energy Research. “I am confused given the non profits he funds and how hard they have worked to demonize coal.”

Soros, whose Climate Policy Initiative think tank recently urged the world to stop using fossil fuels in general and coal in particular, snapped up 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and half a million shares of Arch Coal, giving him significant stakes in what’s left of the U.S. coal industry.

The trades would have cost Soros a lot more six years ago, when Peabody, which trades under the symbol BTU, was at about $90 a share. Under the Obama administration, which has punished the coal industry with costly mandates and regulation, Peabody shares have fallen to around $1.

Neither Soros nor his New York-based investment firm, Soros Fund Management, would comment on the coal play, citing a longstanding policy of not discussing investments.

The 85-year-old hedge fund manager has a net worth of $24.2 billion, according to Forbes.com, which makes him the 19th wealthiest person in U.S. and second among hedge fund managers.

The most recent filing shows Soros Fund Management holds stakes in 263 companies with a total value of nearly $11 billion.

The filing shows the purchases of 553,200 shares of Arch Coal for $188,000 and an investment of $2,254,000 into Peabody Energy for 1,029,400 shares, which means he’s lost money on both so far. Peabody, the biggest coal producer in the U.S. by output, said in a recent statement that it “has been trying to turn itself around as it faces challenges from low natural-gas prices, a glut of global coal supplies, weakened demand from China and a growing public call to cut carbon emissions.”

Soros Fund Management previously held $234 million in shares in the coal producing company, CONSOL Energy, but sold the shares over the last year, according to SNL.com.

Free market energy experts note Soros has invested more than a billion dollars into think tanks, lobbyists, political action committees and politicians who have pushed for regulations that have nearly destroyed the coal industry, in favor of so called “clean energy.”

Soros invested $1 billion in clean energy technology beginning in 2009, according to Bloomberg News. He also founded the Climate Policy Initiative, a San Francisco-based organization, in which he is investing $100 million over a decade, Bloomberg News reports. Among its partners is the UK Department of Energy & Climate Change, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, and the U.S. Department of State. The Climate Policy Initiative released a report last year suggesting the world should transition away from coal.

Soros' Open Society Foundations, which has assets of $1.5 million, according to its most recent IRS 990 tax form, claims over the last three decades expenditures of $12 billion.

Soros was convicted in a French court in 2009 of insider trading, which cost him the equivalent of $2.5 million in fines. That was the amount French prosecutors claimed he made 14 years ago after investing, allegedly with insider knowledge, in the French bank Société Générale - a charge Soros denied.

FECINfo.com, the Political Moneyline database of Federal Election Commission records for donations that George Soros made during the 2012, 2014, and 2016 election cycles, shows 139 records for more than $8.8 million.

In 2015, he made two contributions of $1 million each to Priorities USA Action Super PAC and American Bridge 21st Century Super PAC. He initially supported Hillary Clinton for President when he donated $25,000 to the Ready For Hillary PAC in 2013.

Soros backed President Obama, who notably campaigned in 2008 shutting down the coal industry, a promise industry experts say he’s kept.

“The drop in coal market stock is directly related to the promise that Obama made to his environmental extremist supporters – ‘you can build coal fired power plants, but we will shut them down,’” said John Sparr, a mining engineer and geologist who specializes in the coal industry.

Investments in coal under current conditions bear little risk given the low stock prices.

“With markets dwindling, coal companies shutting down and workers being laid off, it is no wonder that stocks are crashing,” Sparr said.

But should there be a change in the regulatory climate, coal stocks could become a bargain.
The important thing about coal, Simmons said, is a little over 10 years ago, coal produced 50 percent of energy in the U.S. and that is now at 40 percent and continuing to trend downward.

Michael South, a UK-based mining and energy consultant, told FoxNews.com that while coal prices have suffered around the world in part because of a drop in demand from China and other countries, and fracking, which produced natural gas at a cheaper price, there is still a huge need for coal, and eventually prices will go up.

“George Soros spent millions of dollars and multiple years helping to driving down price of coal,” said H. Sterling Burnett, research fellow and managing editor, at the Heartland Institute. “If he buys enough stock to have controlling interests in these coal businesses, closes them down and leaves the coal in the ground, we might accept that he is a true believer, that his investment was all about stopping climate change and saving the environment."

“But my suspicion is that he helped to drive stocks down, bought as many shares as he can, and, when stocks rebound, he can sell his shares and make a huge profit.”

>>> US Gapping up

Gapping up
In reaction to strong earnings/guidance: KTCC +9.6%, ADI +8.2%, BZUN +5.3%, TGT +4.4%, WB +4.1%, HRL +2.5%, SINA +1.1%, AEO +1.1%

M&A news: HILL +87.3% (to be acquired by Seagate Technology (STX) in an all-cash transaction valued $9.75 per share, or ~$694 mln)

Select Semi related names showing strength : SWKS +1.8%, AUDC +1.5%, NXPI +1.2%

Select metals/mining stocks trading higher: MTL +5.4%, KGC +2.5%, AUY +1.4%, HL +1.4%, ABX +1.2%, GG +1.2%, GDX +1.1%, NEM +0.9%

Other news: CRBP +49.5% (investigational drug Resunab has been granted Fast Track Status by the FDA for the treatment of systemic sclerosis), ACI +30.6% (Bloomberg discusses that Arch Coal (ACI) is attempting to appease lenders in debt swap terms), PTN +25.5% (FDA approval of peer Sprout Pharmaceuticals' sexual desire disorder drug ), CNET +22% (announced it has launched a new service, "The GOOD Business of China", along with Baidu (BIDU)), BTU +11.6% (in symp with ACI), VVUS +5.3% (disclosed the voluntary termination of Svai S. Sanford's employment as CFO and CAO effective September 30, 2015), CEMP +4.8% (announces FDA fast track designation for IV solithromycin to treat acquired bacterial pneumonia), ETRM+3.6% (received non-compliance notice from Nasdaq relating to minimum bid price requirement), TRGT +1.5% (shareholders approved merger with Catalyst Biosciences; expects merger to complete on August 20; combined co will be renamed Catalyst Biosciences and trade under symbol CBIO), YUM +1.2% (named Micky Pant as CEO of Yum Restaurants China, succeeding Sam Su), NBG +1.1% (Fitch upgrades Greece to 'CCC'), .

Analyst comments: FOGO +2.5% (upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at JP Morgan), MRVL +1.6% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Ladenburg Thalmann), TPUB +1.3% (upgraded to Neutral from Underperform at Macquarie), INTU +0.6% (upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank), KNX +0.6% (initiated with a Buy at Evercore ISI
)

>>> Target beats by $0.11, reports revs in-line; guides Q3 EPS in-line; raises F

Target beats by $0.11, reports revs in-line; guides Q3 EPS in-line; raises FY16 EPS

  • Reports Q2 (Jul) earnings of $1.22 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.11 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $1.11; revenues rose 2.8% year/year to $17.43 bln vs the $17.4 bln consensus.
    • Comps +2.4% vs +2-2.5% guidance and +2.3% estimate, driven primarily by growth in comparable transactions.
    • Comparable sales in signature categories (Style, Baby, Kids and Wellness) grew three times faster than the company average, resulting in comparable sales growth of four to five percent in both Home and Apparel. Digital channel sales increased 30 percent, contributing 0.6 percentage points to comparable sales growth.
    • Digital channel sales grew 30 percent and contributed 0.6 percentage points to comparable sales growth.
  • Co issues in-line guidance for Q3, sees EPS of $0.79-0.89, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.85 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
  • Co issues upside guidance for FY16, raises EPS to $4.60-4.75, excluding non-recurring items, from $4.50-4.65 vs. $4.62 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.

>>> American Eagle beats by $0.03, beats on revs; guides Q3 EPS in-line (18.27)

American Eagle beats by $0.03, beats on revs; guides Q3 EPS in-line

Reports Q2 (Jul) earnings of $0.17 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.03 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.14; revenues rose 12.1% year/year to $797 mln vs the $769.4 mln consensus. reports Q2 comps +11% vs +HSD guidance and +8% estimate; Q2 gross profit rate 35.7% vs ~36% estimateTotal merchandise inventories at the end of the second quarter increased 4% to $409 million compared to $393 million last year. At cost per foot, inventory increased 5%, consistent with our guidance and below our sales growth rate. Third quarter 2015 ending inventory at cost is expected to be approximately flat.
Co issues in-line guidance for Q3, sees EPS of $0.28-0.31, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.28 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; CO expects COmp store sales to increase in the mid-single digit range.

>>> US Early premarket gappers

Early premarket gappers
Gapping up: HILL +87.1%, PTN +35.1%, KTCC +9.6%, ADI +8.2%, VVUS +5.3%, MTL +5.3%, BZUN +5.3%, WB +4.1%, ETRM +3.6%, AUDC +2.4%, OMER +2.3%, AUY +1.4%, SWKS +1.4%, TRGT +1.3%, YUM +1.2%, GDX +1.2%, SINA +1.1%, ABX +0.7%, HOV +0.5%

Gapping down: CSIQ -11.7%, TEDU -11.2%, HMY -9%, WWWW -7.4%, DV -7.4%, DL -4.2%, STO -2.7%, NBG -2.5%, RIO -2.3%, HSBC -1.8%, BHP -1.7%, LOW -1.7%, UDR -1.6%, SDRL -1.3%, ABB -1.2%, DB -1.1%, AER -1%, RDS.A -1%, BP -1%, MNOV -0.6%

(BI) AbbVie and J&J's Imbruvica May Become Largest Cancer Drug Ever

AbbVie and J&J's Imbruvica May Become Largest Cancer Drug Ever
2015-08-19 11:12:02.597 GMT

BI PHRM GLOB SBKEYS
AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson's blood cancer drug Imbruvica is
expected to achieve sales of $8.4 billion in 2020, based on
consensus, driven by its relatively high price. This exceeds the
$6.9 billion 2014 sales of Herceptin, the highest for a cancer
drug to date. Even as the field of immuno-oncology commands a
lot of air time, those drugs are only responsible for 36% of the
$48 billion increase in drug sales to $103.5 billion in 2020
from 2014. Pharma's targeted drugs remain the key drivers of
sales.

|0|0|565621|233860356|MMDL 233713096|MMDL 233713096|

This research note has been published by Bloomberg Intelligence.
For more information, see BI <GO>
-0- Aug/19/2015 11:12 GMT