Recently the news that hit headlines was about a hacker who had a database that he was trying to sell of around 167 million LinkedIn users account records. TheRealDeal is a website on dark market is where the user had posted the announcement. Stating that the user wanted around $2,200 or 5 bitcoins for the database that was available, it is believed that the data contained not just the email address and ID’s of users however it also contained SHA1 password hashes.
As per the ad of the sale, the complete database of Linkedln‘s was not covered in the dump. LinkedIn claimed that the total number of registered members that is on the website crosses 433 million.
Have I been pwned? Is a website that has been created by Troy Hunt which lets people know about any data breach that has affected them. This is one of the reasons why it is also believed that the leak is said to be one that is legitimate. He stated that from the data set, he managed to gain access for around a million records. Though an email, Hunt stated that he had verified that it was legit as he had seen the data’s subset.
In 2012, there was a data breach that LinkedIn had suffered due to which the password hashes and records of around 65 million users were posted online. It is believed that the particular breach that had happened in 2012 was a lot bigger than what was thought about and the data which was stolen at that time is resurfacing again.
A request was made to LinkedIn to comment about this, however they were not available to respond immediate. On the other side, there have been several failed attempts to make contact to the seller, however the leak indexing website LeakedSource administrators did claim that they had the dataset copy and believe that the particular records n this data is the one that originates from the LinkedIn breach of 2012.
