Security experts are telling global LinkedIn users to change their passwords immediately after Norwegian news outlet Dagen IT reported that hackers succesfully hacked and decoded 163, 267 passwords for the professional social network.
According to InformationWeek, up to 6.5 million passwords, representing around four percent of total LinkedIn users, could ultimately be compromised if partial passwords that were uploaded onto a Russian hacking forum Monday are fully decoded.
On the company’s official Twitter feed, LinkedIn said its team is investigating the reports of stolen passwords but did not confirm if a breach had occurred.
The user who uploaded the “hashed”, or partial, passwords did not include user names, but it is likely that user names may have been compromised as well, according to The Verge.
Finland’s Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-FI, is also advising all of LinkedIn’s estimated 161 million users to immediately change their passwords.
CERT-FI also said that while all of the nearly 6 million stolen passwords have not been published yet, it is likely that the hacker may be in possession of all of them.
The Finnish agency added that users should also change passwords for other services if they are use the same password for LinkedIn.
For more information on how security professionals around the world are responding to the reports, check out additional coverage on TheNewNewInternet.
