General

LinkedIn updates its status after breach

LinkedIn Corp. is working overtime to reassure its members that their data is safe after 6.5 million passwords were stolen last week.

In a blogpost on the company’s website, director Vicente Silveira said LinkedIn is working with the FBI:

“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.”

The Wall Street Journal says that it remains unclear how the passwords were stolen.

While some users complained about the time it took LinkedIn to react to the breach, many more made fun of the news.

Others used the headlines to make the case that the company has lost its way. Here’s Emma Barnett of the Daily Telegraph:

“In a nutshell – people don’t seem to care that much. Whenever Twitter or Facebook experience any type of security breaches, the world is up in arms. And yet when LinkedIn’s biggest security violation to date happens, the reaction is muted to say the least. I believe this is because the professional networking site has lost its way and needs to up its game.”

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