Just when the edtech industry started celebrating a few success stories in India, the news of Unacademy’s 22 million users data hacking has come as a big jolt and raises big questions on seriousness of Cyber threats to education industry.
Unacademy database of 22 million users hacked and up for sale. As reported by Cyble, US based cyber intelligence firm. The data was breached from January but the hackers decided to sell only on May 3rd, 2020.
The Co-Founder & CEO of Unacademy Gaurav Munjal admitted this through his Twitter account of compromising user data and adds no sensitive data has been compromised.
The hackers have claimed access to the complete data of Unacademy and at this point, they have decided to leak only user data, further leaks of data are expected in the near future, Cyble said.
Unacademy is funded by Facebook and there about 12000 educators who joined this big idea of teaching through live classes. Unacademy offers preparation material for several professional and educational entrance exams. Unacademy lessons are in the form of free videos, and via subscription.
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Cyble claims that accounts and records with companies from Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, Reliance Industries, TCS, HDFC, Accenture, ICICI, SBI, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda and several large organizations are also up for sale only for $2000.
The top IT companies employees used their corporate accounts on third-party services reflects a lot about the seriousness of the cyber safety awareness and ethics of the IT professionals. It also calls for all the organizations to work on robust cyber safety guidelines for their employees.
I have been shouting out loud to draw the attention of the schools to have a strong guidelines and work towards implementing data privacy policy for students, teachers and services availing from all the third parties.
Small Prize of Data & Lots At Stake
Big jolt to Unacademy, it has a lot at stake now. The cost of data on the dark web is only $2000 which is a very small amount compared to regaining the trust of the millions of users and organizations. The path to recovery lies in steps to level up cybersecurity.
What users of Uncademy can do to safeguard themselves?
Change their Unacademy passwords immediately.
Change passwords of any other account with a similar password pattern.
Implement multi-factor authentication where possible
Avoid using their corporate email addresses on third party services where possible
Closely monitor their financial transactions records to detect any anomalies
Recommended by Cyble Inc.
Nexschools is campaigning for cyber safety awareness among schools, teachers, parents, and children. Reach out to us for any questions, training programs and awareness talk sessions