LinkedIn has been the latest victim of a major data breach, with the personal information of over 500 million users being scraped from the site and sold online.
An anonymous user on a hacker forum is allegedly selling the breached data, which includes data from over two million users as sample evidence. The hacker is demanding a four-digit amount (in USD) in return for the stolen information, which may be in the form of Bitcoins.
A similar incident exposed scraped information from over 500 million Facebook users. Facebook was involved in a major data breach that exposed 533 million users’ personal information.
Leaked Data Of 500 Million Users Are On The Dark Web!
According to CyberNews, Linkedin was a victim of a major data breach that revealed the personal information of 500 million users on the dark web.
The LinkedIn ID, full names, email addresses, phone numbers, genders, links to LinkedIn accounts, links to other social media profiles, professional titles, and other work-related data were all leaked, according to the study.
The report further added that it is not clear whether the threat actor is selling the updated Linkedin profiles or whether the data was gathered from Linkedin’s previous breach.
Acknowledging the data breach, Linkedin said that the breach includes publicly viewable profile data that has been scraped from Linkedin.
“Members trust LinkedIn with their data, and we take action to protect that trust. We have investigated an alleged set of LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale and have determined that it is an aggregation of data from several websites and companies. It does include publicly viewable member profile data that appears to have been scraped from LinkedIn. This was not a LinkedIn data breach, and no private member account data from LinkedIn was included in what we’ve been able to review. Any misuse of our members’ data, such as scraping, violates LinkedIn terms of service. When anyone tries to take member data and use it for purposes LinkedIn and our members haven’t agreed to, we work to stop them and hold them accountable,” the Microsoft-owned site said in a statement.
Italian Privacy Watchdog To Investigate The Linkedin Data Breach
The Italian privacy watchdog has begun an investigation into the Linkedin data breach, which exposed the personal data of millions of users.
The authorities told Bloomberg that it has started an investigation following “the dissemination of user data, including IDs, full names, email addresses, telephone numbers.”
Cybercriminals will use the leaked data to conduct targeted phishing attacks, spam 500 million emails and phone numbers, and brute-force the passwords of Linkedin accounts and email addresses, according to CyberNews.
Protect Yourself From Potential Attack
Be cautious of suspicious LinkedIn messages and connection requests from strangers. To protect yourself from potential attacks, update your LinkedIn account password as well as the email address associated with it, and allow two-factor authentication on all of your official accounts.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.