Microsoft-owned LinkedIn faces massive 500M users data breach, says report

• The leaked data includes email addresses, contact information, workplace information, names, account IDs, etc.
• Previously Facebook had faced massive 533 million users data breach.
• Although, LinkedIn denied the claims and said it was not a data breach.

After Facebook, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, an online job portal, has faced a massive data breach which has leaked sensitive details of around 500 million users, almost 70% of its user base, says CyberNews report. The report also mentioned that the leaked data of users are being sold on a hacker site forum.

Cybersecurity-focused online publication portal, in a report, said, The leaked data could include details like email addresses, contact numbers, workplace information, full names, and gender, LinkedIn IDs, Links to other social media profiles, and more.

The four leaked files contain information about the LinkedIn users whose data has been allegedly scraped by the threat actor, including sensitive details, it said.

The hacker forum was offering users to view leaked details for about $2 worth of forum credits and appears to be auctioning the details of 500 million users for a minimum of 4-digit dollars, presumably in bitcoin.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn denied the claims and confirmed that the data was being sold but it wasn't a data breach.

“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," said LinkedIn.

"We have investigated an alleged set of LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale and have determined that it is actually an aggregation of data from a number of websites and companies. It does include publicly viewable member profile data that appears to have been scraped from LinkedIn," it said.

With this, LinkedIn also faces problems from Italy's privacy watchdog as it began an investigation into the incident which took place in the last week. In a report, Garante Privacy said, "Italy is one of the European countries with the highest number of subscribers to the platform, the Authority also calls all users affected by the violation to the need to pay particular attention to any anomalies related to your telephone number and your account IDs."

The online portal also confirmed that it did not find any deeply sensitive details like credit card numbers and legal documents in the hacker forum. Although email addresses have been found in the forum, through which a hacker can cause real damage using phishing attacks and social engineering.

Users are advised to change the passwords, beware of suspicious emails, and avoid connecting from unknown profiles.

The data breach is getting common on the internet, recently social networking site Facebook had faced a massive 500 million users data breach; Bigbasket had faced 20 million users data leak, RailYatri, Edureka, Paytm Mall, and the list goes on.

Also Read: India’s Cybersecurity Coordinator Says There Were 375 Cyberattacks Daily In 2020

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