Linkedin ‘no reports that member accounts were breached’

Linkedin have been reassuring its business customers that their data is safe. They said they received no reports that member accounts were breached after experiencing a password theft targeting 6.5 million people. These passwords were stolen and then published on a website last week.

Security experts said  that Linkedins protection was inadequate, especially their procedures for protecting passwords. Other users complained about delays in receiving information about the problems.

Vincente Silveria, a Linkedin director defended the company and he spoke out in a blog post saying that they were working with the FBI to ‘aggressively' pursue the culprits.

No information has been released as to specifics regarding the theft. Silveria said “As soon as we learned of the theft, we launched an investigation to confirm that the passwords were LinkedIn member passwords, Once confirmed, we immediately began to address the risk to our members.”

He said the company disabled passwords that were published and alerted the users to change them immediately.

Most of the passwords that were published were not decoded or published with corresponding log in information so the company did not believe that any accounts were breached. The company say they have 160 million members.

Linkedin have came under attack for not having an extra layer of password security known as ‘salting' and for not having a chief security officer responsible for protecting the members.

Kitguru says: We imagine Linkedin are updating their security now.

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