Linkedin Blog

By now, many of you have read recent headlines reporting that 6.5 million LinkedIn hashed passwords were stolen and published on an unauthorized website. We take this criminal activity very seriously so we are working closely with the FBI as they aggressively pursue the perpetrators of this crime. As you may have heard, there have been reports of other websites that have suffered similar thefts. We want to be as transparent as possible while at the same time preserving the security of our members without jeopardizing the ongoing investigation. In this post, we want to address questions we’ve been receiving and share what we’ve learned so far about the incident, how we’ve responded, and what we’re doing to protect our members going forward.

First, it’s important to know that compromised passwords were not published with corresponding email logins. At the time they were initially published, the vast majority of those passwords remained hashed, i.e. encoded, but unfortunately a subset of the passwords was decoded. Again, we are not aware of any member information being published at any time in connection with the list of stolen passwords. The only information published was the passwords themselves.

It is of the utmost importance to us that we keep you, our members, informed regarding the news this week that some LinkedIn member passwords were compromised. We want to reiterate that we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our members.

From the moment we became aware of this issue, we have been working non-stop to investigate it. While we continue to learn more as a result of our ongoing investigation, here is what we know now:

We want to provide you with an update on this morning’s reports of stolen passwords. We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts. We are continuing to investigate this situation and here is what we are pursuing as far as next steps for the compromised accounts:

Members that have accounts associated with the compromised passwords will notice that their LinkedIn account password is no longer valid. These members will also receive an email from LinkedIn with instructions on how to reset their passwords. There will not be any links in this email. Once you follow this step and request password assistance, then you will receive an email from LinkedIn with a password reset link. These affected members will receive a second email from our Customer Support team providing a bit more context on this situation and why they are being asked to change their passwords.

It is worth noting that the affected members who update their passwords and members whose passwords have not been compromised benefit from the enhanced security we just recently put in place, which includes hashing and salting of our current password databases.

Our security team continues to investigate this morning’s reports of stolen passwords. At this time, we’re still unable to confirm that any security breach has occurred. You can stay informed of our progress by following us on Twitter @LinkedIn and @LinkedInNews.

While our investigation continues, we thought it would be a good idea to remind our members that one of the best ways to protect your privacy and security online is to craft a strong password, to change it frequently (at least once a quarter or every few months) and to not use the same password on multiple sites. Use this as an opportunity to review all of your account settings on LinkedIn and on other sites too. Remember, no matter what website you’re on, it’s important for you to make sure that you protect your account security and privacy.