Hackers Crack More Than 60% Of Breached LinkedIn Passwords

June 07, 2012 By Ali Loney

1 minute read time

Computerworld – (International) Hackers crack more than 60% of breached LinkedIn passwords. More than 60 percent of the unique hashed passwords accessed by hackers from a LinkedIn password database and posted online the week of June 4 were already cracked, according to security firm Sophos. It is very likely the remaining passwords were also cracked, said a security researcher. In all, 6.5 million hashed password believed to belong to LinkedIn members were posted on a Russian hacker forum the week of June 4. The crooks posted the data in an effort to get help in cracking the passwords. Sophos said it identified about 5.8 million hashed passwords as unique. Based on an analysis of the 118MB password dump, the security researcher said close to 3.5 million of the unique passwords were cracked and made available in plain text by June 6. It is only a matter of time before the remaining passwords are similarly cracked using automated password guessing tools, he added.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227869/Hackers_crack_more_than_60_of_breached_LinkedIn_passwords

Tags: News, security, AppSec Spotlight

Written by Ali Loney

Ali Loney is a Senior UX Designer at Walmart Labs. She is based in Canada and was the former Graphic Designer at Sonatype.