Those of us who have accounts on LinkedIn and received a breach notification, should you be changing passwords on your other systems if you used the same password as on LinkedIn ?
Many people think that if they change the password on their possibly compromised account they are safe. Smart hackers will look at the list of breached information and start to link those people to other accounts such as Gmail, netfilx, amazon, facebook etc.
Even though you shouldn’t be reusing the same passwords on multiple systems for the reason above, many do. So now is a good time to rethink your password strategy and as you change that “same” password across multiple systems, try changing them to different ones that aren’t easily guessable and contain at least one special character, a capital letter and a number.
It’s better to protect yourself now then clean up after your information has been breached.
Copy of breach notification from LinkedIn
|
Notice of Data Breach |
| You may have heard reports recently about a security issue involving LinkedIn. We would like to make sure you have the facts about what happened, what information was involved, and the steps we are taking to help protect you. |
| What Happened? |
| On May 17, 2016, we became aware that data stolen from LinkedIn in 2012 was being made available online. This was not a new security breach or hack. We took immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of all LinkedIn accounts that we believed might be at risk. These were accounts created prior to the 2012 breach that had not reset their passwords since that breach. |
| What Information Was Involved? |
| Member email addresses, hashed passwords, and LinkedIn member IDs (an internal identifier LinkedIn assigns to each member profile) from 2012. |
| What We Are Doing |
| We invalidated passwords of all LinkedIn accounts created prior to the 2012 breach that had not reset their passwords since that breach. In addition, we are using automated tools to attempt to identify and block any suspicious activity that might occur on LinkedIn accounts. We are also actively engaging with law enforcement authorities. |
| LinkedIn has taken significant steps to strengthen account security since 2012. For example, we now use salted hashes to store passwords and enable additional account security by offering our members the option to use two-step verification. |
| What You Can Do |
| We have several dedicated teams working diligently to ensure that the information members entrust to LinkedIn remains secure. While we do all we can, we always suggest that our members visit our Safety Center to learn about enabling two-step verification, and implementing strong passwords in order to keep their accounts as safe as possible. We recommend that you regularly change your LinkedIn password and if you use the same or similar passwords on other online services, we recommend you set new passwords on those accounts as well. |
| For More Information |
| If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Trust & Safety team at tns-help@linkedin.com. To learn more visit our official blog. |