A case of cyber attack has come up in the e-learning Unacademy app preparing for competitive examinations like IAS, IPS, IFS. Due to this cyber attack, the information of user accounts of 20 million (2 crore) users has been leaked. Cyber security intelligence firm Cyble has shared information about this data leak. According to the cyber security firm, in January 2020, the account details of the 2 crore users of this e-learning app were sold in the Dark Web (which is not indexed by search engines).
The e-learning firm Unacademy has also confirmed the data leak incident and has said that we have not had to compromise with any important information. Unacademy says that they are monitoring the incident, in which the basic information of 11 million (1.1 million) users has been leaked, but no sensitive information has been leaked out.
The company claims that they use PBKDF algorithm with SHA256 hash due to which it is not easy to crack the password of e-learners. Also we use OTP based log-in systems for additional security, so that the account can get extra layer security. The company is doing a complete background check for this.
Let us tell you that the Cyber Security firm had found out about the data leaks happening from the popular video calling app Zoom in the past. The log-in details of more than 5 million users of Zoom were sold in the dark web. The Unacademy app has millions of users. Currently, due to the coronavirus lockdown, most of the contestants and students are preparing for the exam using an e-learning platform like Unacademy. In the last few days, due to the lockdown in many countries around the world, people are using more Internet and digital communication than before. Because of which hackers have also become more active.
