14 DAY TRIAL // Training website Lynda.com got hacked recently, as attackers managed to breach a database containing contact information and courses viewed for approximately 55,000 users, the company confirmed.
Lynda.com, which is a subsidiary of LinkedIn, the company that Microsoft recently purchased, confirmed the hack and said that it already triggered a password reset for all the 55,000 accounts.
Additionally, Lynda.com is now sending emails to 9.5 million users to inform them about the breach, and although their data wasn’t included in the hacked database, it just wants to make sure that no other details are being exposed and users can take additional actions to secure their accounts.
Hashed passwords, no personal information leaked
No credit card information was included in the hacked database, Lynda.com said in the email sent to customers, and all passwords were cryptographically salted and hashed, it added.
“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,” the company said in the email submitted to customers.
“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.”
The best thing Lynda.com users can do right now is to reset their passwords even though there’s a good chance that their accounts are secure. Obviously, any sign of a possible breach should be reported to the website, but given the fact that not much has been accessed by hackers, this isn’t a critical breach.
Lynda.com’s parent company, LinkedIn, was purchased by Microsoft earlier this year for $26.2 billion, as part of a takeover that generated controversy, mostly because some other parties, including Salesforce, were involved in negotiations. Microsoft rivals requested antitrust bodies to look into the deal, indicating that it could violate competition rules. The takeover was eventually cleared by competition watchdogs.