A few months after LinkedIn experienced a data breach, the professional networking platform is now under fire again after reportedly suffering from yet another cybersecurity incident which left the data of around 700 million users for sale on the Dark Web.
According to Threat Post, security researchers from Privacy Sharks initially found the data posted on the popular hacker forum RaidForums posted by the hacker called GOD User TomLiner. The security researchers posted the report on Sunday, June 27, 2021.
The attacker posted an advertisement on the forum last June 22, 2021, saying that 700 million LinkedIn records are for sale. As proof of the hacker’s claims, Threat Post said that a sample of one million records has also been posted on RaidForums.
Based on the data analyzed by the security researchers from Privacy Sharks, the team found that the compromised information includes the personal details of users. These include the full names of individuals, their gender, phone numbers, email addresses, and other pertinent industry information.
There are, however, no signs of financial or credit card information being obtained by hackers. Moreover, Privacy Shark also maintained that private messages and other sensitive information within LinkedIn have not been compromised, reveals Threat Post.
Prior to the latest June 2021 alleged data security issue, LinkedIn already experienced a similar incident earlier in April. The incident affected approximately 500 million account users, with the data leak making the personal details of users vulnerable as well, reports The Economic Times.
Following the supposed data breach, LinkedIn made a public statement denying there has been a cybersecurity incident in the first place.
In a note posted on its website, the company said, “Our teams have investigated a set of alleged LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale. We want to be clear that this is not a data breach and no private LinkedIn member data was exposed.”
“Our initial investigation has found that this data was scraped from LinkedIn and other various websites and includes the same data reported earlier this year in our April 2021 scraping update,” continued the networking platform in its statement.
Despite these claims, the security researchers say users of the professional networking platform who have had their information compromised may be prone to attacks such as spam campaigns or even identity theft. They may also be prone to phishing attacks.
To help individuals to become victims of such attacks, users are urged to change their passwords as well as enable two-factor authentication, shares Threat Post.
