{"id":5147,"date":"2021-07-23T12:30:42","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T16:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nexela.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=5147"},"modified":"2023-03-20T15:25:15","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T19:25:15","slug":"linkedin-users-exposed-on-hacker-forums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nexela.com\/?p=5147","title":{"rendered":"LinkedIn Users Exposed on Hacker Forums"},"content":{"rendered":"

With every new day comes a new data breach that exposes the personal data of countless people. The most recent in this troubling trend is the LinkedIn data breach, an event that exposed 700 million profiles and led them to be put on sale on a hackers forum. LinkedIn denies the data breach, but how much truth is in this statement? Let\u2019s take a closer look.<\/p>\n

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LinkedIn\u2019s Sketchy Security History<\/h2>\n

LinkedIn is a social media site for professionals to network with other professionals, and this reputation for being a place for professionals to gather and share ideas makes it a huge target for hackers. In 2012, a Russian hacker stole 6.5 million accounts, exposing 100 million email addresses and passwords. One year later, more controversy surfaced as LinkedIn used man-in-the-middle attacks to intercept user emails and move them to LinkedIn servers. In 2018, following Microsoft\u2019s acquisition of LinkedIn, users began to receive extortion emails from account information that had been for sale on the Dark Web.<\/p>\n

In addition to these instances, LinkedIn has historically been connected to other security breaches, including fake LinkedIn accounts used to steal data and allow unauthorized access to third-party networks.<\/p>\n

2021 Issues<\/h2>\n

This past April, 500 million LinkedIn user accounts went up for sale on a popular hacker forum. This new posting was not the result of a data breach; the information was scraped, but still included vital information such as full names, email addresses, phone numbers, workplace information, and so on. Since LinkedIn has around 740 million users, this hack hit the majority of people who use LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, as if these developments weren\u2019t already cause for concern, LinkedIn has reportedly been removing access to scholars and other active individuals inside China without any sort of explanation. This has led many intellectuals and other active users of the platform to suspect that the company is censoring information to operate in the Chinese market–a market that is notorious for suppressing the availability of information to its population.<\/p>\n

Recently it was reported that a data breach allowed hackers to make information public from over 700 million records from LinkedIn (about 92 percent of its user base). LinkedIn denied the data breach, issuing the following statement:<\/p>\n