Lynda.com suffers breach, 55,000 credentials stolen; but there's little to worry about

Lynda.com, famous for its exceptional training courses was recently hacked. Reportedly, 55,000 credentials and information pertaining to course selection was stolen. The site has since issued a password reset to all the affected accounts and has sent out an email to all of its users, informing them about the breach. Softpedia reports that despite the breach, the accounts are unlikely to be compromised because the information was “cryptographically salted and hashed.” In layman’s terms, this means that the passwords will be almost impossible to decrypt. Salting refers to a technique of adding random data to a password before it’s encrypted. This renders dictionary attacks useless and astronomically increases the time required to crack a password. In an email to all its users the company stated, “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.” Just to be safe, it’s best to reset your passwords, however. Lynda.com is a subsidiary of LinkedIn which was in-turn purchased by Microsoft earlier this year.