by Tim Lemieux

A post on the TheNextWeb site indicates that a Norweigan IT webite, Dagens IT reported the breach. That site indicates that 6.5 million encrypted LinkedIn passwords have been posted to a Russian hacker site.

LinkedIn has responded that they are looking into the breach. To be safe, LinkedIn users should change their passwords immediately.

For more passwords tips, see this article from Law Practice Magazine: Don’t Be Passé With Passwords: Best Practices for Staying Safe

[Updated 3:30 pm Eastern]

Not a lot of info from LinkedIn on this so far today. Two earlier tweets indicating they are investigating and haven’t yet confirmed that a breach occurred.

A further tweet and post on one of their blogs at 2:30pm indicating they are still investigating, have still yet to confirm a breach has occurred, and a recommendation the LinkedIn users change their passwords and follow password best-practices (and they provide an excellent list of them).

Please change your LinkedIn password if you have not yet done so – and take a look at the password best practices in the LinkedIn post so that you use a password that is harder for the hackers to crack.

Not a bad time to change the passwords on your other accounts. If you use Google, consider enabling Google’s two-factor authentication, especially if you are using it for your law practice. See instructions on how to do this here.

You could also consider using a password manager like LastPast. It is a cross-platform and device tool that will safely store and remember passwords for you, thereby making it easier to use different and stronger passwords for your various accounts.