LinkedIn working with FBI to investigate hacking
LinkedIn said it is working with the FBI to investigate a cyber attack in which 6.5 million of its users’ passwords were stolen.
The company told the Los Angeles Times that it is working with the federal agency after announcing on its blog that it was working with law enforcement to find more information about the recent hacking.
Earlier Thursday, the business social network also told The Times that it had not verified any break-ins into its users’ accounts, which it also announced later in a blog post.
The company said that a total of 6.5 million passwords were stolen and published online but that only a small subset had been decoded successfully.
LinkedIn is requiring all users whose passwords were compromised to change their passwords, and in its post Thursday, it announced that it also would lock out additional users who may have been affected until they changed their passwords as well.
“Since we became aware of this issue, we have been taking active steps to protect our members,” the company said in its post. “Our first priority was to lock down and protect the accounts associated with the decoded passwords that we believed were at the greatest risk.”
LinkedIn has yet to say how the hacker accessed its users’ passwords and what other information may have been accessed. It also did not address complaints of phishing scams targeting its users after the hacking attack.
The FBI did not respond to requests for comment.
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