LinkedIn encourages users to change passwords

The well-known social network of professional contacts LinkedIn reported about the compromise of its service. According to LinkedIn, a few days ago, attackers published on the network some of the previously stolen user accounts, and this is an impressive figure of 100 million accounts. LinkedIn experts claim that the compromise itself occurred back in 2012, when the service underwent a cyber attack and the leak of user accounts.

Yesterday, we became aware of an additional set of data that had just been released that claims to be email and hashed password combinations of more than 100 million LinkedIn members from that same theft in 2012. We are taking immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of the accounts impacted, and we will contact those members to reset their passwords. We have no indication that this is as a result of a new security breach.

The accounts that this attacker has gained are the hashes of user passwords. Social network specialists began to notify victims of a user leak about resetting their passwords. They also recommend using two-factor account authentication and checking their security settings.

We take the safety and security of our members' accounts seriously. For several years, we have hashed and salted every password in our database, and we have offered protection tools such as email challenges and dual factor authentication. We encourage our members to visit our safety center to learn about enabling two-step verification, and to use strong passwords in order to keep their accounts as safe as possible.

As a safeguard, we recommend that users change their LinkedIn account passwords. To do this, use the following instructions .