Cybersecurity: 500m LinkedIn users’ details leaked, posted for sale online

*The Company is reportedly on hot seat as 2 million records with e-mails, phone numbers and other details of users were leaked as proof

Gbenga Kayode | ConsumerConnect

Though the tech giant has claimed that it updated the personal data leak checker database with more than 780,000 e-mail addresses associated with this leak, LinkedIn profiles of about 500million users’ data scraped by the threat actors yet were found posted online for sale.

Days after a massive Facebook data leak made the headlines, it seems like consumers are in for another one, and 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, with another 2 million records leaked as a proof-of-concept sample by the post author, CyberNews said.

It was gathered that the four leaked files contain information about the LinkedIn users whose data has been allegedly scraped by the threat actor, including their full names, email addresses, phone numbers, workplace information, and more.

Consumers are, therefore, urged to see if their e-mail addresses have been exposed in this data leak, or other security breaches, and to use the LinkedIn personal data leak checker with a library of 15+ billion breached records.

Whereas users on the hacker forum can view the leaked samples for about $2 worth of forum credits, the threat actor appears to be auctioning the much-larger 500 million user database for at least a 4-digit sum, presumably in bitcoin.

Report also indicates that the author of the post claims that the data was scraped from LinkedIn.

“Our investigation team was able to confirm this by looking at the samples provided on the hacker forum.

“However, 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,” the source stated.

CyberNews noted that it asked LinkedIn if they could confirm that the leak was “genuine”, and whether they have alerted their users and clients, but we have received no reply from the company at the time of filing the report.

In terms of what was leaked in the data breach incident, and based on the samples gleaned from the leaked files, they appear to contain a variety of mostly professional information from LinkedIn profiles, according to report.

These include details such as LinkedIn IDs, full names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, genders, links to Linkedin profiles, links to other social media profiles, professional titles and other work-related data.

With regard to the impact of the leak on consumers, businesses, organisations and governments among others, the report explained that the data from the leaked files can be used by threat actors against LinkedIn users in multiple ways by carrying out targeted phishing attacks; spamming 500 million e-mails and phone numbers; and brute-forcing the passwords of LinkedIn profiles and email addresses.

The leaked files appear to only contain LinkedIn profile information – we did not find any deeply sensitive data like credit card details or legal documents in the sample posted by the threat actor.

With that said, even an e-mail address can be enough for a competent cybercriminal to cause real damage, it noted.

Steps to protection against threat actors or cybercriminals

If you suspect that your LinkedIn profile data might have been scraped by threat actors, the organisation recommends that consumers do the following:

Use our personal data leak checker to find out if your LinkedIn data has been leaked by the threat actor.

Beware of suspicious LinkedIn messages and connection requests from strangers.

Change the password of your LinkedIn and email accounts.

Consider using a password manager to create strong passwords and store them securely.

Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on all your online accounts.

Besides, watch out for potential phishing emails and text messages. Again, don’t click on anything suspicious or respond to anyone you don’t know.