Just days after Facebook’s latest massive leak was made public, we now learn that the personal data of 500 million LinkedIn users is also being sold on the Dark Web. We tell you what has happened.
Last weekend, one of Facebook’s largest personal data breaches came to light, with more than 533 million users around the world affected. But Mark Zuckerberg’s social network is not the only one that has seen user information made available for sale on the Dark Web: the personal data of 500 million LinkedIn users is also being marketed on the dark web.
This has been revealed by the specialized medium Cybernews, whose research team has discovered this particular offer in a hacker forum. The user who markets this database ensures that it is information extracted from the professional social network and, so that potential buyers can check its validity, provides a sample with 2 million records in exchange for $2 in forum credits. The entire database with the 500 million records is sold for a sum of a minimum of four digits.
Cybernews experts have analyzed the sample and confirm that, indeed, the data has been extracted from LinkedIn. They cannot be sure if it is current information or if, on the contrary, it comes from previous security breaches of the professional social network or hacks from other companies. This data could come, for example, from phishing campaigns such as the fake job offers on LinkedIn that is currently active.
The leaked database includes LinkedIn ID, full name, email, phone number, gender, link to LinkedIn profile, links to other social media profiles, professional titles, and other data. work related.
Fortunately, passwords are not included, but this does not mean that this information is not dangerous in the wrong hands. On the contrary, it can be exploited by criminals to carry out targeted phishing attacks, send spam via email and SMS, as well as force passwords for LinkedIn profiles and email addresses.
Although it is already possible to know if you have been a victim of Facebook’s large personal data leak, it is not possible at the moment to find out if your personal information is included in this new LinkedIn data leak. Just in case, be extra cautious with incoming messages and connection requests from strangers, enable two-factor authentication whenever you can, and use a strong and secure password.