Member Article

Hackers leak LinkedIn passwords

Six million passwords have been leaked onto the internet, after the social networking website LinkedIn was hacked.

Hackers have posted a file containing encrypted passwords onto a Russian web forum, and the site has now invited the hacking community to help with decryption.

LinkedIn has over 150 million users, and has yet to release a formal statement, but has tweeted that their team is “currently looking into reports”.

Despite this however, security researcher Graham Cluley has told the BBC that the breach is genuine.

He said: “We’ve confirmed there are LinkedIn passwords in the data.

It is now advised that users should consider changing their LinkedIn password, especially if the same password is used on other accounts.

This is the second recent security scare for the site, after LinkedIn was forced to update its mobile app after a privacy flaw was uncovered by security researchers. According to Skycure Security the mobile app was sending unencrypted calendar entries to LinkedIn servers without users knowledge, including meeting notes.

LinkedIn has since promised not to send data from the meeting notes section of calendars.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .