In June of 2021, the massive professional networking platform LinkedIn discovered that data linked with 700 million members had been exposed on a forum on the dark web. This breach affected more than 90 per cent of LinkedIn’s user base. Before releasing the first information data set of approximately 500 million customers, a hacker who goes by the pseudonym “God User” employed data scraping methods by abusing the site’s (and others’) API to access the site’s data.
After that, they continued with a brag in which they said they were selling the whole database of 700 million customers. A scraped data sample uploaded by God User contained information including email addresses, mobile numbers, geolocation records, gender identities, and other social media details. This information would give malicious actors much data to craft convincing, follow-on social engineering attacks following the leak, as notified by the UK’s NCSC.
Consequently, practising good cyber hygiene is one of the surest methods to strengthen the entire security posture of any business and to guard against attacks both now and in the future.
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