6.5 Million LinkedIn Passwords Get Leaked

23:26 in hacking news, linkedIn hacked

LinkedIn Confirms Millions of Account Passwords Hacked

LinkedIn Wednesday confirmed that at least some passwords compromised in a major security breach correspond to LinkedIn accounts.
Norweigan IT website Dagens IT first reported the breach, noting that “Two days ago a package on the 6.5 million encrypted passwords posted on a Russian hacker site.
he file only contains passwords hashed using the SHA-1 algorithm and does not include user names or any other data, security researchers say. However, the breach is so serious that security professionals advise people to change their LinkedIn passwords immediately. An SHA-1 hash is an algorithm that converts your password into a unique set of numbers and letters. If your password is “LinkedIn1234,” for example, the SHA-1 hex output should always be “abf26a4849e5d97882fcdce5757ae6028281192a.” As you can see that is problematic since if you know the password is hashed with SHA-1, you can quickly uncover some of the more basic passwords that people commonly use.he file only contains passwords hashed using the SHA-1 algorithm and does not include user names or any other data, security researchers say. However, the breach is so serious that security professionals advise people to change their LinkedIn passwords immediately. An SHA-1 hash is an algorithm that converts your password into a unique set of numbers and letters. If your password is “LinkedIn1234,” for example, the SHA-1 hex output should always be “abf26a4849e5d97882fcdce5757ae6028281192a.” As you can see that is problematic since if you know the password is hashed with SHA-1, you can quickly uncover some of the more basic passwords that people commonly use.