Developers’ Education Site Thinkful Discovers Data Breach

Thinkful, an online education site for developers, has revealed that it has been hit with a data breach.

“We recently discovered that an unauthorized party may have gained access to certain Thinkful company credentials so, out of an abundance of caution, we are notifying all of our users,” said Erin Rosenblatt, the company’s vice president of operations, in an email to users, according to TechCrunch. “As soon as we discovered this unauthorized access, we promptly changed the credentials, took additional steps to enhance the security measures we have in place, and initiated a full investigation.”

The news comes just a few days after the company, which provides education and training for developers and programmers, announced it is being acquired by Chegg for $80 million in cash.

It would not reveal when the breach took place or if Chegg was aware of the incident before the acquisition announcement. Ironically, Chegg suffered from its own data breach a year ago, which impacted 40 million users.

A spokesperson for Chegg did not respond to a request for comment, and Thinkful spokesperson Catherine Zuppe did not respond to several emails about the incident.

The email Thinkful sent to its users explained that the hacker would not be able to gain access to certain sensitive information, such as government-issued IDs and Social Security numbers, or financial information.

While the company said it has seen “no evidence” of any unauthorized access to account data, it couldn’t rule out that any improper access could or did take place. As a result, it is requiring all users to change their passwords.

TechCrunch also asked the company what security measures it has taken since the breach, but it has not received a response.