Hacker has a list of 700 million LinkedIn users for sale
After 500 million LinkedIn enthusiasts were affected in a
data-scraping incident in April, it’s happened again – with big security
ramifications.
A new posting with 700 million LinkedIn records has appeared
on a popular hacker forum, according to researchers.
Analysts from Privacy Sharks stumbled across the data put up
for sale on RaidForums by a hacker calling himself “GOD User TomLiner.” The
advertisement, posted June 22, claims that 700 million records are included in
the cache, and included a sample of 1 million records as “proof.”
Privacy Sharks examined the free sample and saw that the
records include full names, gender, email addresses, phone numbers and industry
information. It’s unclear what the origin of the data is – but the scraping of
public profiles is a likely source. That was the engine behind the collection
of 500 million LinkedIn records that went up for sale in April. It contained an
“aggregation of data from a number of websites and companies” as well “publicly
viewable member profile data,” LinkedIn said at the time.
According to LinkedIn, no breach of its networks has
occurred this time, either:
“While we’re still investigating this issue, our initial
analysis indicates that the dataset includes information scraped from LinkedIn
as well as information obtained from other sources,” according to the company’s
press statement. “This was not a LinkedIn data breach and our investigation has
determined that no private LinkedIn member data was exposed. Scraping data from
LinkedIn is a violation of our Terms of Service and we are constantly working
to ensure our members’ privacy is protected.”
“This time around, we cannot be sure whether or not the
records are a cumulation of data from previous breaches and public profiles, or
whether the information is from private accounts,” according to Privacy Shark’s
blog post, published Monday. “We employ a strict policy of not supporting
sellers of stolen data and, therefore, have not purchased the leaked list to
verify all of the records.”
There are are 200 million more records available in the
collection this time around, so it’s probable that new data has been scraped
and that it’s more than a rehash of the previous group of records, researchers
added.
Security Ramifications of Data-Scraping
The good news is that credit-card data, private message
contents and other sensitive information is not a part of the incident, from
Privacy Shark’s analysis. That’s not to say there aren’t serious security
implications though.
“The leaked information poses a threat to affected LinkedIn
users,” according to Privacy Sharks. “With details such as email addresses and
phone numbers made available to buyers online, LinkedIn individuals could
become the target of spam campaigns, or worse still, victims of identity
theft.”
It added, “expert hackers may still be able to track down
sensitive data through just an email address. LinkedIn users could also be on
the receiving end of email or telephone scams that trick them into sharing
sensitive credentials or transferring large amounts of money.”
Then there are brute-force attacks to be concerned about:
“Using email addresses provided in the records, hackers may attempt to access
users’ accounts using various combinations of common password characters,”
researchers warned.
And finally, the data could be a social-engineering
goldmine. Sure, attackers could simply visit public profiles to target someone,
but having so many records in one place could make it possible to automate
targeted attacks using information about users’ jobs and gender, among other
details.
“It is not uncommon to see such data sets being used to send
personalized phishing emails, extort ransom or earn money on the Dark Web –
especially now that many hackers target job seekers on LinkedIn with bogus job
offers, infecting them with a backdoor trojan,” Candid Wuest, Acronis vice
president of cyber-protection research, said via email at the time of the first
data-scraping incident. “For example, such personalized phishing attacks with
LinkedIn lures were used by the Golden Chickens group.”
Users should secure their LinkedIn accounts by updating
passwords and enabling two-factor authentication.
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