Linkedin is asking many of its users to change passwords – The Post

Many people are on Linkedin, the popular site to give visibility to your resume and find a job, have received in recent days an email asking you to reset their account password. Linkedin explained that the request was made because recently have been popular online data access to about 100 million Linkedin account, which put at risk the security. The 100 million passwords and email widespread recently are probably part of a huge group of data that was stolen from LinkedIn servers in 2012: the theft had always been aware of it until a few days ago it was believed he had covered no more of 6.5 million accounts in all.

Cory Scott, the head of cybersecurity Linkedin, May 18, wrote on his blog that:

Yesterday we realized an additional set of newly released data that seems to contain the email and password combinations of more than 100 million LinkedIn members obtained during the theft of 2012. we are taking the steps necessary to invalidate all the passwords of accounts involved and will contact those users to reset their password. We have no information to believe that the spread of the new data is the result of a new theft.

In an increasingly update May 18, Scott explained that all users who had created their account prior to 2012 and who had never changed the password since been asked to do so and that these passwords have been disabled in the meantime to avoid the risk of further loss of personal data and information.

in 2012, a group of hackers managed to access the Linkedin servers and steal data from millions of accounts. Linkedin spending about $ 1 million to investigate the theft and established that led to the loss of information on 6.5 million accounts. A few days ago, however, a group of hackers claimed to be in possession of access data relating to 117 million service accounts, which in total has 433 million members. The Wall Street Journal said that in 2012 Linkedin noticed the theft after several emails and passwords were posted on a Russian hacker forum and probably on that occasion would have to, for a precautionary principle , ask all users to change passwords: this, however, could be annoying for many people and Linkedin probably feared losing users.

in addition to the password change applied to many users, LinkedIn said it is using the “automatic systems” to identify suspicious activity on its servers, and block any attempts to access user accounts. In addition, Scott said he had asked several sites, probably forums and file sharing sites, to block the spread of the stolen data.