Data of around 700 million LinkedIn users put up for sale on a popular hacking forum exposing personal information.
- Data of 700M LinkedIn users posted for sale in the cyber underground.
- The dataset includes information scraped from LinkedIn as well as information obtained from other sources.
- Hackers may attempt to access user’s accounts using various combinations of familiar password characters.
Data of around 700 million LinkedIn users put up for sale on a popular hacking forum exposing personal information.
Security researchers from Privacy Sharks came across a data sale on RaidForums by a hacker calling himself “GOD User TomLiner.” According to the advertisement posted on June 22, claims that 700M records are included in the cache, containing a sample of 1 million records as proof.
Privacy Sharks analysed the free sample and saw that the records exposed full names, gender, email address, contact numbers and industry information.
“While we’re still investigating this issue, our initial analysis indicates that the dataset includes information scraped from LinkedIn as well as information obtained from other sources,” states the company’s statement. “This was not a LinkedIn data breach, and our investigation has determined that no private LinkedIn member data was exposed. Scraping data from LinkedIn is a violation of our Terms of Service, and we are constantly working to ensure our members’ privacy is protected.”
“This time around, we cannot be sure whether or not the records are a cumulation of data from previous breaches and public profiles, or whether the information is from private accounts,” reported Privacy Shark’s blog post. “We employ a strict policy of not supporting sellers of stolen data and, therefore, have not purchased the leaked list to verify all of the records.”
There are 200 million more records available in the collection this time around, so it’s probable that new data has been scrapped and that it’s more than a rehash of the previous group of records, researchers added.
Privacy Shark's analysis states that credit card information, private message contents and other sensitive data are not a part of the incident.
The leaked data poses a threat to affected LinkedIn users with details such as email addresses and contact numbers made available to buyers online. LinkedIn users could become the target of spam campaigns.
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