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Health & Fitness

Hackers Get Millions of LinkedIn Passwords

If you think you've been hacked, there are some easy steps to restore security to your account.

No one know exactly when this happened, but recently hackers managed to get part of LinkedIn hashed password database, containing 6.3-6.5 million individual passwords.

On Wednesday, Sophos, a British Internet security company, announced that they found a large file (dump) on a Russian hacker forum that claimed to contain the hashed passwords from LinkedIn. Looking into the dump, several engineers at Sophos found their own LinkedIn passwords, confirming the claim.

Later that day, an executive at LinkedIn issued a carefully worded blog post supporting Sophos' claim. LinkedIn is currently working on notifying everyone with a compromised account and disabling all compromised passwords.

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The company is also updating their security. The stolen information only uses basic hashing algorithms, making it easier for the hackers (and anyone with access to the forums) to decode the passwords.  The enhanced security features include salting their password database to increase the complexity of the hashed passwords.. 

I know that several people in East Cobb use LinkedIn, and I strongly suggest that you change your LinkedIn password immediately.  

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To change your password:

  1. Mouse over your name in the top right corner of any LinkedIn webpage.
  2. Select "Settings" from the drop down menu.
  3. At this point, LinkedIn might ask you for your current email address and password. Enter the appropriate information and continue.
  4. Look at the left hand side of the screen. In the box with your LinkedIn pictures, you will see a field marked "Primary Email Address." Under that field you'll see "Password" with a link to the right labelled "change."
  5. Click the "change" link to create a new password.
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