LinkedIn yesterday confirmed that there was a breach of security, and
that member passwords were dumped by the attackers. The password hashes
have been posted on the Internet in a 250 Megabyte text file, and it is
generally assumed that people have started to break the hashes to
reveal the underlying passwords. All in all, about 6.5 million LinkedIn
user accounts are affected by this.
LinkedIn itself has taken counter measures to protect affected users accounts from being compromised. Probably the biggest protection in this regard is that affected account passwords have been invalidated, so that they can’t be used anymore to log in to LinkedIn.
All affected members will receive an email from LinkedIn that contains instructions on how to reset the account passwords. LinkedIn notes that these emails will not contain links, to avoid copy cat emails that use this for phishing. It basically comes down to reseting the user account password to receive a new one. Affected members will furthermore receive a second email from LinkedIn’s customer support team that is explaining the situation to them.
While LinkedIn is doing everything they can to resolve the issue and protect their user’s accounts, it needs to be noted that users who have used the password on multiple sites need to change the password on all sites where they did so.
The LastPass company got their hands on the hashes and have created a small online test that you can use to see if your password is on the leaked list or not. Just head over to the site and enter your LinkedIn password there. You can naturally enter a password that you are curious about instead, just to see if it has been used by any of the members.
Source: ghacks
LinkedIn itself has taken counter measures to protect affected users accounts from being compromised. Probably the biggest protection in this regard is that affected account passwords have been invalidated, so that they can’t be used anymore to log in to LinkedIn.
All affected members will receive an email from LinkedIn that contains instructions on how to reset the account passwords. LinkedIn notes that these emails will not contain links, to avoid copy cat emails that use this for phishing. It basically comes down to reseting the user account password to receive a new one. Affected members will furthermore receive a second email from LinkedIn’s customer support team that is explaining the situation to them.
While LinkedIn is doing everything they can to resolve the issue and protect their user’s accounts, it needs to be noted that users who have used the password on multiple sites need to change the password on all sites where they did so.
The LastPass company got their hands on the hashes and have created a small online test that you can use to see if your password is on the leaked list or not. Just head over to the site and enter your LinkedIn password there. You can naturally enter a password that you are curious about instead, just to see if it has been used by any of the members.
Source: ghacks
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