LinkedIn provides breach update -- sort of
In an update that raises more questions than it answers, LinkedIn today assured members that the company is working hard to protect their personal data in the wake of a security breach that exposed about 6.5 million hashed LinkedIn passwords.
But the company offered no explanation as to how the passwords had been obtained, how they ended up being posted on a Russian hacker website earlier this week, and what other data might have been compromised.
In a somewhat confusingly worded blog post, LinkedIn director Vicente Silveira this afternoon said that LinkedIn had "learned" about 6.5 million passwords being posted on a hacker site, but then neither confirmed nor denied that number. Instead, he merely noted that most of the passwords on the list appeared to remain hashed and hard to decode. "But unfortunately a small subset of the hashed passwords was decoded and published," Silveira said.
