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LinkedIn-owned Lynda.com hacked with 9.5M accounts compromised
2016 can’t end quickly enough in the land of corporate security. LinkedIn Inc.-owned online learning provider Lynda.com disclosed over the weekend that it was hacked, with the personal details of some 9.5 million users being accessed.
On a bright note, if there can be for such occurrences, only a small number of hacked accounts included password information. The company started informing users Sunday about the hack, with an email not even suggesting that passwords be reset:
We recently became aware that an unauthorized third party breached a database that included some of your Lynda.com learning data, such as contact information and courses viewed. We are informing you of this issue out of an abundance of caution.
Please know that we have no evidence that this data included your password. And while we have no evidence that your specific account was accessed or that any data has been made publicly available, we wanted to notify you as a precautionary measure.
If you have questions, we encourage you to contact us through our Support Center.
In a follow-up statement made to Neowin, the company explained the hack further:
We recently became aware that an unauthorized third party accessed a database that included Lynda.com user data. As a precautionary measure, we reset passwords for the less than 55,000 Lynda.com users affected and are notifying them of the issue. We’re also working to notify approximately 9.5 million Lynda.com users who had learner data, but no password information, in the database. We have no evidence that any of this data has been made publicly available and we have taken additional steps to secure Lynda.com accounts.
Lynda.com was acquired by LinkedIn in $1.5 billion in April 2015 and has since delivered strong growth results for the corporate social networking site, at least prior to its recent finalized acquisition by Microsoft.
It’s not clear at this stage how the hack occurred or perhaps more importantly how recently it occurred, but it’s never a good look for a company to be hacked none the less. The hacking of Lynda.com comes the same week as fallen Internet icon Yahoo.com disclosed it had been hacked for a second time with the data from a staggering 1 billion accounts being compromised.
Image courtesy of Lynda.com
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