LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com in 2015 for a whopping $1.5 billion. This particular website has suffered a data hack. The users were notified by the company over the weekend through email. In the data breach, around 50,000 users have been affected.
Reportedly, the database that contained information of learning data about Lynda.com users was hacked. Lynda.com, an online education company offering thousands of video courses started notifying users as soon as they noticed that the database has been accessed illegally by a third-party. It is worth noting that LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for $26 billion recently.
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According to a statement released by Lynda.com, the database contained information such as contact information and courses viewed along with login credentials. However, the company has affirmed users that there is no evidence regarding exposure of their passwords or public leaking of the hacked data.
Yet, LinkedIn has confirmed that around 50 to 55 thousand users of Lynda.com are notified to reset their passwords on an immediate basis. As a precautionary measure, LinkedIn will also notify 9.5million other users whose entire learner data (excluding the passwords), which is also stored in the hacked database.
Currently, there is no indication about the possible perpetrators of the data breach or the “unauthorized third party” as the company puts it. We have no information whether the data breach was conducted by a security researcher trying to scan the internet to identify vulnerable databases or this is the work of a malicious hacker.
Investigators are doubtful at the moment because of the ongoing spree from white hat hackers who try to locate publicly accessible databases in order to notify the related company and expect some kind of reward in return. It is very much possible that this data breach is a result of efforts by white hat hackers. However, going by LinkedIn’s record so far in data breaches we can also speculate that malicious attackers could be involved.
Over the years, LinkedIn has suffered too many data breaches such as in 2012, passwords of 117million users of the website were stolen. In May 2016 the data from that breach was exposed by hackers on the DarkWeb. Initially it was claimed by LinkedIn that only 6.5million accounts were hacked but in reality over 117million users were affected.
However, the alleged hacker behind LinkedIn breach was arrested in Prague in October this year. As per the latest reports, LinkedIn has vowed to implement steps that would enhance the security of Lynda.com and law enforcement has also been informed by the company.
The email sent by LinkedIn to its users about the data breach is as follows:
“We recently became aware that an unauthorized third party breached a database that included some of your Lynda.com learning data, such as contact information and courses viewed. We are informing you of this issue out of an abundance of caution. Please know that we have no evidence that this data included your password. And while we have no evidence that your specific account was accessed or that any data has been made publicly available, we wanted to notify you as a precautionary measure.
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