Although not yet confirmed by the business-networking website, it is being widely speculated that over six million passwords belonging to LinkedIn users have been compromised.
A file containing 6,458,020 SHA-1 unsalted password hashes has been posted on the internet, and hackers are working together to crack them.
Although the data which has been released so far does not include associated email addresses, it is reasonable to assume that such information may be in the hands of the criminals.
Investigations by Sophos researchers have confirmed that the file does contain, at least in part, LinkedIn passwords.
As such, it would seem sensible to suggest to all LinkedIn users that they change their passwords as soon as possible as a precautionary step. Of course, make sure that the password you use is unique (in other words, not used on any other websites), and hard to crack.
If you were using…
Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.
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