Hacker Selling Off Nearly 167 Million LinkedIn User Account Records

There have been countless security breaches among many companies throughout the world, including several government entities. Among the many security breaches, LinkedIn suffered a blow back in 2012 where hackers obtained access to millions of user account login data. At the time, there was some confusion as to how much data was actually stolen. Now, much of that data has resurfaced to be sold off by hackers over the Dark Web.

A hacker is attempting to sell off a database that allegedly contains as many as 167 million LinkedIn user account records. Within those records are claimed to be login passwords that may enable others to access user accounts on the professional business social network.

LinkedIn has been acclaimed as one of the larger social networks only falling to the vast numbers of Facebook, Twitter, and a few other well-known social networks. With over 433 million registered users, LinkedIn is a natural target for hackers to obtain data so they may later sell it off to the highest bidder. Coincidently, a hacker is attempting to do just that on the dark market website TheRealDeal where 5 Bitcoins ($2,200) is the price asked for the data.

Computer security experts have viewed this latest occurrence of selling off hacked LinkedIn data at a distance and taken it with a grain of salt. Several factors lead experts to believe that the data sell-off doesn't contain legitimate data from LinkedIn. Moreover, if the data does contain real LinkedIn user account information, most of it is expired or outdated due to users updating their passwords during the four years since the data was stolen.

To add insult to injury, the exact number of accounts pilfered during the 2012 LinkedIn security breach have varied considerably. In fact, at one time it was claimed that only 6.5 million LinkedIn password hashes were leaked in 2012 and hackers managed to crack about 60% of those accounts. With the claimed number of 117 million hashes being stolen, it is believed that hackers are only able to crack half. Hashing of the data would validate the passwords and make a comparison of older data with the latest and greatest, which may not do much good considering how long ago the initial data was siphoned from LinkedIn.

Hackers will go to great lengths to foil potential victims and those that they attempt to sell off compromised data. Login credentials to high profile sites and social networks go for a premium these days and the dark web is prime real-estate for selling off stolen data to other cybercrooks. Even if the stolen data from a LinkedIn data heist back in 2012 proves to be illegitimate, the hackers behind the sale will still attempt to collect as much as they can because they are after-all greedy and thrive around the notoriety of their thieving accomplishments.