LinkedIn’s subsidiary online learning platform, Lynda.com, is notifying its 9.5 million users of a database breach containing account holders contact information, learning data and courses viewed.
According to Lynda.com, just under 55,000 account password were stored in the database and all have been “cryptographically salted and hashed”, as referenced in VentureBeat.
According to the publication, a Lynda.com spokesperson said, “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.”
The company emailed the users whose passwords weren’t part of the breach as a precautionary measure.
“We recently became aware that an unauthorised 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.”
The breach comes a few days after Yahoo admitted a hack of data in August 2013, affecting more than 1 billion accounts.
Lynda.com was acquired by LinkedIn in April 2015 for roughly $15 billion.
In June, Microsoft bought LinkedIn in a transaction worth $26.2 billion, exposing Microsoft to more than 433 million members worldwide.
