LinkedIn Reassures Users over ‘Data Breach’

LinkedIn has reassured its users after a “Data Breach” that involved a hacker stealing more than one hundred million identities.

“LinkedIn has taken significant steps to strengthen account security since 2012. For example, we now use salted hashes to store passwords and enable additional account security by offering our members the option to use two-step verification,” the email read

The networking platform confirmed the may May 17 hack with an email explaining the “facts about what happened, what information was involved, and the steps we are taking to help protect you”.

“On May 17, 2016, we became aware that data stolen from LinkedIn in 2012 was being made available online,” the email read.

That hacker, identified as “Peace” by Motherboard, was advertising the sale of logins, account information, including emails and passwords of 117 million LinkedIn users on two hacker sites.

LinkedIn originally reset the accounts of those it recognised as being compromised, and wrote that “this was not a new security breach or hack. We took immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of all LinkedIn accounts that we believed might be at risk.

“These were accounts created prior to the 2012 breach that had not reset their passwords since that breach.”

Since the breach, the business confirmed “we are using automated tools to attempt to identify and block any suspicious activity that might occur on LinkedIn accounts.”

“LinkedIn has taken significant steps to strengthen account security since 2012.

“For example, we now use salted hashes to store passwords and enable additional account security by offering our members the option to use twostep verification.”

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Hashing involves using an algorithm to convert passwords into a long string of digits. Salting is a secondary step meant to stop unauthorised parties from being able to reverse the process.

“We have several dedicated teams working diligently to ensure that the information members entrust to LinkedIn remains secure. While we do all we can, we always suggest that our members visit our Safety Center to learn about enabling two-step verification, and implementing strong passwords in order to keep their accounts as safe as possible. We recommend that you regularly change your LinkedIn password and if you use the same or similar passwords on other online services, we recommend you set new passwords on those accounts as well.”