News
Details of 117 million LinkedIn on darknet - comments from Webroot
May 2016 by Webroot
Following the news that details of 117 million LinkedIn users have been advertised
on the darknet, David Kennerley, senior manager for
threat research at Webroot, comments:
"It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a rich pool of data and there’s no doubt this made
it an extremely attractive target for the hacker. Although some steps to mitigate
the problem such as resetting passwords of affected accounts were taken by LinkedIn
at the time of the initial breach in 2012, the inability to accurately predict the
scale of the problem has resulted in far more users being affected than should have
been.
"In today’s threat landscape, users can never just rely on organisations to keep
their personal details safe - they must take as many steps as possible to secure it
themselves. In this case, ensuring that the password used for LinkedIn is different
to other accounts is crucial. This will limit the potential impact on other
accounts, including email which can lead to other more sensitive information being
stolen."
