Chegg resets 40 million user passwords after data breach

guest · Sep 26, 2018

Chegg resets 40 million user passwords after data breach
September 26, 2018
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/chegg-resets-40-million-user-passwords-after-data-breach/

Chegg, a technology giant specializing in textbook rental, has confirmed a data breach affecting some 40 million customers.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it will reset all user passwords after hackers gained access to the company’s customer database. That database includes users for Chegg’s website but also other products, such as citation service EasyBib, which it owns.

The breach occurred in April, but was only discovered a week ago.

Hackers stole usernames, email addresses, shipping addresses and hashed passwords, the company said, but doesn’t believe that financial data was taken.
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guest · Oct 1, 2019

Saint Mary’s email addresses appear in credential dump following Chegg data breach
October 1, 2019
https://ndsmcobserver.com/2019/10/s...-credential-dump-following-chegg-data-breach/

In April 2018, the widely-used tutoring service and textbook provider Chegg experienced a data breach, after an unauthorized source accessed one of the company’s databases. The breach was discovered in Sept. 2018.

On Sept. 26, chief information officer Todd Norris announced in a campus-wide email that the Saint Mary’s College Information Technology department had learned the Chegg usernames and passwords originally stolen in the breach had been decrypted and posted online. Though Chegg reset the passwords of the 40 million affected accounts on their own system, Norris said individuals who are using the same password on other sites are now at risk.

“I never got an email from Chegg confirming the security breach that happened last year,” Koeppl said.
“Instead of only contacting the 1,253 individuals in the list REN-ISAC provided, it was decided that all Saint Mary’s students, faculty and staff would be notified,” she said. “Those who signed up with Chegg using personal e-mail accounts would then also be aware that their account information could have been made public.”
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guest · Oct 10, 2019

Following flood of spam emails, more than 1,000 student accounts temporarily disabled
October 10, 2019
https://dailyfreepress.com/blog/201...n-1000-student-accounts-temporarily-disabled/

Over 1,000 Boston University students were forced to change their account passwords after BU servers were flooded with spam emails from student accounts in late September, university officials said. The spam is believed to be a result of a 2018 breach of the educational site Chegg.

“In terms of the breach itself, Boston University cannot know which passwords have been reused with which sites,” Jacobsen wrote. “We became aware of the scope of this problem on September 20th when our email servers were inundated with unsolicited bulk email, often called ‘spam,’ from approximately 1,100 accounts.”
While they cannot pinpoint exactly which accounts received spam, the Information Security team spoke with other institutions and concluded that the Chegg breach was the main source of the spam, Jacobsen wrote.
Chegg is not officially associated with BU, but it is a service many students turn to for resources such as online textbooks and answers to homework.

“After I heard about this, I realized my password for Chegg was the exact same as my school passwords, so I had to change everything,” Richardson said. “I was just more careful. I mean, I just haven’t used as much this year, I really don’t need it with the classes I’m taking right now. But definitely, I’m going to be careful in the future.”
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guest · Apr 29, 2020

Chegg data breach lawsuit heads to arbitration
April 29, 2020
https://www.reuters.com/article/dat...ch-lawsuit-heads-to-arbitration-idUSL2N2CG2JU

A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit against education technology company Chegg Inc over its 2018 data breach that may have exposed the personal information of about 40 million users must proceed to arbitration.
U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett in Baltimore on Monday granted Chegg’s motion to compel arbitration and dismiss claims by plaintiff Jabari Lyles, finding there is no “triable issue of fact” regarding whether Lyles and Chegg formed an arbitration agreement.
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guest · May 1, 2020

Chegg Confirmed Data Breach of Employee Records
April 30, 2020
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-s...gg-confirmed-data-breach-of-employee-records/

American education technology company Chegg confirmed a data breach in which malicious actors stole some of its employee records.

As reported by TechCrunch, digital attackers succeeded in stealing 700 records associated with current and former Chegg employees. Those records contained individuals’ personally identifiable information (PII) including their names and Social Security Numbers.
The company said that it had begun working with law enforcement as well as an unnamed third-party digital forensics firm to investigate what had happened.
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A day before news of this latest breach emerge, a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit pertaining to the 2018 security incident must proceed to arbitration, according to Reuters.
Norris feels that the most recent security incident involving Chegg highlights the need for organizations to strengthen their efforts to protect their employees and customers against identity theft:

The exposure of such a large database of data is worrying, especially since it contains sensitive information such as Social Security numbers. Three incidents in the span of three years confirm that cybercriminals are becoming more and more motivated by the potential monetary gain of selling personal identifiable information – which has become a kind of currency on the dark market. [...]
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guest · May 13, 2020

Mass consumer arbitration is on! Ed tech company hit with 15,000 data breach claims
May 12, 2020
https://www.reuters.com/article/leg...t-with-15000-data-breach-claims-idUSKBN22O33E

A small Baltimore law firm has filed 15,107 demands for arbitration at the American Arbitration Association on behalf of consumers who allege they were affected by a 2018 data breach at the education technology company Chegg.

The arbitration demands follow an April 27 ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett of Baltimore that customers must arbitrate their claims against Chegg instead of suing in a class action. Chegg’s lawyers at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe did not respond to a request for comment on the 15,107 arbitration demands, which were filed by Z Law.

Z Law’s founder, Cory Zajdel, told me his firm was girded for mass arbitration even as it opposed Chegg’s motion to compel arbitration. And he’s betting what he called a “crazy” chunk of his own money on the proposition that mass consumer arbitration can be economically viable.
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Zajdel said he hopes Chegg decides to pay the requisite fees and begin arbitrating his clients’ cases. If not, he said, he will go back to Judge Bennett in Baltimore or to court in Chegg’s home state of California to force the company to follow the terms of its consumer contracts.

“This is what Chegg said they wanted,” he told me. “We’ll see if it’s what they really wanted.”
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ronjor · Nov 2, 2022

FTC Orders Chegg to Improve Security Following Multiple Data Breaches

By Ionut Arghire on November 01, 2022
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week announced that it has reached an agreement with education technology provider Chegg over the company’s cybersecurity failures leading to several data breaches.
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