LinkedIn hacked, 6.4 million user passwords at risk
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LinkedIn hacked, 6.4 million user passwords at risk

Hackers from a Russian Web forum obtained the treasure trove of data Wednesday.

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Fernando Alfonso III— | Last updated

In what has been called the “most boring leak ever,” more than 6.4 million LinkedIn user passwords have been compromised.

Hackers from a Russian Web forum obtained the treasure trove of data Wednesday and have already cracked about 300,000 passwords, ZDNet reported.

LinkedIn is looking into the reports of a breach, while other security professionals hope the company is looking into beefing up security.

“We’ve confirmed there are LinkedIn passwords in the data,” security researcher Graham Cluley told the BBC.

“We did this by searching through the data for (hashed) passwords that we at Sophos use only on LinkedIn. We found those passwords in the data. We also saw that hundreds of the passwords contain the word ‘Linkedin.’”

News of the hack spread quickly on Twitter where people couldn’t help but make fun of the situation.

“Morning: LinkedIn hacked. Afternoon: Passwords meekly returned after hackers reach never before seen levels of boredom,” @kingsroc tweeted .

“Maybe the LinkedIn password hash leak was intentional, to get us all to login to LinkedIn again,” @csoandy added. “And maybe use it.”

Just maybe.

Photo by subcircle

Fernando Alfonso III

Fernando Alfonso III

Fernando Alfonso III served as an early Reddit and 4chan reporter and the Daily Dot’s first art director until 2016. He’s gone on to report at Lexington’s Herald-Leader and at the Houston Chronicle.

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