IT Security: Data breach at LinkedIn’s Lynda.com affects 55,000 accounts

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The passwords were secure, but the training site isn’t taking any chances

Microsoft is getting a little bit more than it bargained for now that its acquisition of LinkedIn is official. LinkedIn’s training site Lynda.com is notifying users of a database breach that includes the passwords of just under 55,000 accounts. All those passwords were “cryptographically salted and hashed” to prevent access the site says, but it’s resetting the logins just in case. Lynda.com is also alerting 9.5 million customers “out of an abundance of caution“, according to the email it’s sending to users.

This new breach pales in comparison to the 2012 LinkedIn password hack, which compromised roughly 117 million accounts. There’s also no indication that the two incidents are connected. All the same, it’s not going to be completely comforting to Microsoft — the tech giant likely didn’t want to start the LinkedIn era grappling with security issues, even if there’s no real damage to users.