In 2012, the account information of 6.5 million users was posted to a Russian hacker site. LinkedIn after 2012 hack did not clarify how many users were affected by the breach. At the time, our immediate response included a mandatory password reset for all accounts we believed were compromised as a result of the unauthorized disclosure. “This means there are duplicates, and this is good for password researchers because it allows us to come up with statistics of how often certain passwords are used”, it said. There’s no indication that the newly-released passwords are the result of any new security breaches, LinkedIn said.
Advertisement
It has at least begun invalidating any passwords that haven’t been changed since the 2012 hack, but it goes without saying that you should make sure you have changed yours manually if you haven’t altered it since before the hack. “We’ve recently noticed a potential risk to your LinkedIn account coming from outside LinkedIn”, the email reads, adding: “Just to be safe, you’ll need to reset your password the next time you log in”. The company is also invalidating all customer passwords that haven’t been updated since they were stolen. LinkedIn is investigating the authenticity of the data, the company said.
“We believe it is from the 2012 breach,”.
You should also enable two-factor authentication on any sites that allow it. We covered the story then, noting that almost 6.5 million LinkedIn accounts were in danger.
Jason Hart, CTO of Data Protection at Gemalto, said: “Passwords are not secure, no matter how complicated or clever we make them”.
Only about 117 million of all the accounts have the emails and their passwords in encrypted form. And no, you shouldn’t paste all those different usernames and passwords into a plain text file so you can remember them.
LinkedIn recommends changing your password for the site, enabling two-step verification and using a strong password.
Yesterday I received an email from LinkedIn asking me to change my password.
Advertisement
Do not reuse old passwords.
