By Josh Kirschner for Techlicious
LinkedIn & eHarmony Confirm Passwords Were Hacked
Professional networking site LinkedIn and dating site eHarmony confirmed yesterday that millions of user passwords have been stolen from their databases and posted on the Internet. If you are a user of either of these services, it’s critical that you change your password immediately on these sites, as well as any other sites for which you use the same password, especially for email, banking or other sensitive data.
The breach was identified when the hacker(s) posted the list of 8 million encrypted passwords to a hacker forum for help with breaking the encryption code. Sophos security is reporting that more than 60% of the passwords have already been cracked.
Worse, while the 8 million passwords posted represent only a small portion of the total users of the sites, some security experts suspect that the hacker(s) may have access to the full password list and only posted those that they were having difficulty cracking. Rick Redman, a security consultant for Kore Logic Security told Ars Technica, “It’s pretty obvious that whoever the bad guy was cracked the easy ones and then posted these, saying, ‘These are the ones I can’t crack.'”
How did this happen? –Article Continued Here
This excerpt appears with permission from Techlicious.
TechTalk Notes:
Email Communication to Linked In Users (06/09/2012)
We recently became aware that some LinkedIn passwords were compromised and posted on a hacker website. We immediately launched an investigation and we have reason to believe that your password was included in the post.
To the best of our knowledge, no email logins associated with the passwords have been published, nor have we received any verified reports of unauthorized access to any member’s account as a result of this event. While a small subset of the passwords was decoded and published, we do not believe yours was among them.
The security of your account is very important to us at LinkedIn. As a precaution, we disabled your password, and advise you to take the following steps to reset it. If you reset your password in the last two days, there is no need for further action.
1. Type www.linkedin.com/settings directly into your browser
2. Type in your email address and press Sign In, no password necessary
3. Follow the on-screen directions to reset your passwordNote: Do not reuse your old password when creating your new password.
If you have been using your old LinkedIn password on other sites, we recommend that you change those passwords too. We appreciate your immediate attention to resetting your password and apologize for the inconvenience.Thank you,
The LinkedIn Team
