A cybersecurity investigator reported the finding of at least eight databases without online protection measures. According to cyber forensics course specialists from the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS), these databases contain about 60 million of LinkedIn users records.
Most of the data is accessible to any user with
minimal knowledge. As reported by the researcher, these databases include
information such as:
- Usernames
- Email
associated to LinkedIn - Type
of subscription - User
profile URL - Work
history - Academic
background - Information
on other social media profiles
The type of information exposed makes the cyber
forensics course specialists think that the databases
could have been formed from security breaches. Each exposed database contains
between 25 GB and 32 GB of information, which means a total of 299 GB of
exposed data.
The investigator in charge of reporting this finding claims that the databases disappeared and reappeared with different IP addresses each day. The exposed database has already been secured, maybe by the very same owner, the researcher mentioned.
According to the cyber forensics course
specialists, it is disturbing that, among the LinkedIn profiles exposed, there
were some users who had advanced privacy settings to prevent some personal
details from being publicly disclosed.
So far it is still unknown who is behind this
database; the information remained exposed for an indefinite period until this
Monday morning, when the database was finally secured.
Regarding this incident, LinkedIn’s security
team specialists confirmed that this database was not operated by the social
platform; LinkedIn added that it has a strict control over its databases
operated by third parties.
Nowadays it is very common for cyber security
investigators and firms to find huge exposed databases online, either due to
data breach incidents, or due to the limited security measures implemented by
some companies that protect personal information belonging to their users.
