6.5 Million LinkedIn Accounts Get Hacked

The world’s largest professional social network has just had a breach. News of the hacking of 6.5 million LinkedIn accounts spread across the web like wildfire recently. The story was broken by a Norwegian IT company who said that all 6.5 million passwords associated with the hacked accounts were posted to a Russian Hacker site.

LinkedIn made an official release via its Twitter account after several users confirmed that their passwords were in fact compromised. The actual number of passwords decrypted is sketchy but many are estimating that at least 300,000 have been exposed so far.  Still, if only 300K passwords have been decrypted it shows on one level that LinkedIn’s encryption system is somewhat solid. They did after all steal over 6.5 million passwords.

News of the breach added to LinkedIn’s security slips as there was already some furore over its Apple iOS meeting app. According to many sources the App leaks important details about meetings and many users were getting concerned about this fact. LinkedIn has over 165 million active users, many of whom are businesses executives and junior-level managers. If the App is indeed leaking meeting notes then it’s a hole that needs to be plugged soon if LinkedIn is to preserve its status among these power users.