Half A Billion LinkedIn Members Found For Sale
Only a few days after discovery of a massive dump of Facebook user data, there has been a second enormous data theft, this time involving LinkedIn. An archive containing data purportedly scraped from 500 million LinkedIn profiles has been put for sale on a popular hacker forum. IDs, names, email addresses and more personal details are part of the massive database of stolen data, which could be used to launch additional attacks on LinkedIn and its users.
The data leak was posted to a forum popular with hackers by a user asking for a "four-digit $$$$ minimum price" for access to the full database of stolen account information.
To prove the legitimacy of the info, the leaker included two million records as a sample that users on the form can view for $2 worth of forum-specific credits. CyberNews researchers were able to confirm that the data contained in the sample was legitimate, but added that, "It's unclear whether the threat actor is selling up-to-date LinkedIn profiles, or if the data has been taken or aggregated from a previous breach suffered by LinkedIn or other companies." Included in the leaked data was "a variety of mostly professional information," including LinkedIn IDs, full names, email addresses, phone numbers, user gender, links to LinkedIn profiles, links to other connected social media profiles, professional titles and other work-related data.
The leaked data doesn't appear to contain any credit card, other financial details or legal documents that could be used for fraud, although the lack of financial or identification documentation doesn't mean the leaked data isn't dangerous as a determined attacker can combine information found in the leaked files with other data breaches in order to create detailed profiles of their potential victims. "With such information in hand, they can stage much more convincing phishing and social engineering attacks or even commit identity theft against the people whose information has been exposed on the hacker forum," CyberNews said.
LinkedIn says it has nearly 740m users worldwide and if the leaker selling this batch of stolen data is telling the truth, then almost anyone with a LinkedIn account could be among the 500 million leaked records.
LinkedIn users should take precautions to protect their accounts and their personal data by:
- Changing LinkedIn account passwords and email account passwords associated with LinkedIn profiles.
- Being wary of LinkedIn messages and connection requests from unknown people.
- Learning to identify phishing emails and text messages.
- Never opening links to websites from an email, and instead navigating to a site manually and logging in there.
- Installing strong anti-phishing and anti-malware software.
In addition to taking proper precautions with your security, it's also a good idea to subscribe to a website like Have I Been Pwned, which will notify you if your email address is found in a data breach that it has scanned and added to its master database of compromised accounts. If your information appears in a Have I Been Pwned search, it's important to take action immediately using the above security tips.
You Might Also Read:
