Many of you may already have heard this news about a security breach at Linkedin as some hackers were able to breach Linkedin password database and able to get access to 6.5 million encrypted passwords and then hackers posted hashes of these passwords claiming them to be from LinkedIn’s database on a Russian site as reported by Norweigan IT website Dagens IT reported. Out of these 6.5 million encrypted passwords, over 300,000 passwords are said to have been already decrypted.

This security breach has been now confirmedby Linkedin in their latest blog entry by Vicente Silveira.

We want to provide you with an update on this morning’s reports of stolen passwords. We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts.

If you own a Linkedin account, then it is recommended that you should change your password immediately. You should also change the passwords of those site for which you use the same password as Linkedin (It’s the case with majority of people).

Was *My* LinkedIn Password Hacked?

LastPass guys (The best password management tool) have created a small tool that can tell you if your Linked password was hacked or not.

You can access the tool here.

This tool asks you to enter your LinkedIn password & then computes its SHA-1 hash and sends the result to LastPass.com to search from the list of 6.5 million leaked password hashes. After that it tells you if your password was one of the ones that was compromised or NOT.

Staps taken by Linkedin for Members whose passwords are compromised

  1. They will notice that their LinkedIn account password is no longer valid.
  2. They will also receive an email from LinkedIn with instructions on how to reset their passwords. There will not be any links in this email. Once you follow this step and request password assistance, then you will receive an email from LinkedIn with a password reset link which can be used to reset the password.

Some of the additional security measure implemented by Linkedin after this security breach  include hashing and salting of their current password databases.

Have you tested if your Linkedin Password was compromised? If not, then do check it now and change your password. Also, always create stronger passwords as they need more effort and time to hack or decrypt.