LinkedIn Confirms Hack And Leak Of “Some” User Passwords

Shortly after it was reported that nearly 6.5 million LinkedIn account passwords were leaked onto the net, LinkedIn leapt into action and mounted their own investigation.

Though most of the morning was spent claiming that they could not confirm a security breach, a new announcement on their blog reveals that at least some of those leaked passwords correspond to LinkedIn accounts.

There’s no official word yet on just how many users were impacted, though the company seems to have learned their lesson about storing passwords — they say that they have recently begun hashing and salting their current password databases. LinkedIn’s Vicente Silveira was quick to note that the investigation is far from over though, and with any luck they’ll soon discover and disclose how exactly those LinkedIn accounts were compromised.

As previously mentioned, 6.5 million leaked passwords breaks down to less than 5% of LinkedIn’s current userbase, but if you haven’t changed your password yet you really should. And in case you’re curious about the sorts of passwords that appear in the sizable password hash dump, the team at FictiveKin have launched a tool called LeakedIn that takes a text input, hashes it with the SHA-1 algorithm, and checks it against the leaked file.

Here’s their statement regarding what they intend to do for affected users:

We are continuing to investigate this situation and here is what we are pursuing as far as next steps for the compromised accounts:

Members that have accounts associated with the compromised passwords will notice that their LinkedIn account password is no longer valid.

These members will also receive an email from LinkedIn with instructions on how to reset their passwords. There will not be any links in these emails. For security reasons, you should never change your password on any website by following a link in an email.

These affected members will receive a second email from our Customer Support team providing a bit more context on this situation and why they are being asked to change their passwords.

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