Is the Ashley Madison hack a national security risk?

People in the national security community are already under extra scrutiny, but that can ratchet up if you’re having an extramarital affair, or are spotted trolling for one. That makes you a blackmail risk, and therefore a potential insider threat.

At a Defense One LIVE event last month, Patricia Larsen, co-director of the National Insider Threat Task Force, said marital issues were one of many potential indicators that they would look at as part of a continuous evaluation.

“There’s a lot of information about you that’s already out there. We want to put it together in one place so we can short circuit the information gathering point,” Larsen said. “We haven’t waited three, four, or five years to see that, you’ve got some nasty credit problems, going through a nasty divorce, and are starting to get worse and worse evaluations over time.”

Someone attempting to access AshleyMadison.com from an government-issued device or from a work computer on the navy.mil or mail.mil domains probably doesn’t pose much of a corruptable threat, at least nothing that the Defense Department isn’t already aware of.