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An hacker just posted 117 million emails, passwords from 2012 hack online

In response, LinkedIn says it is working to validate the accounts and contact affected users so they can take appropriate steps to change their password on the site.

LinkedIn is a good free, online platform for recruitment.

A LinkedIn hack that happened in 2012 is still causing problems for some users of the platform, according to various media reports.

This morning, the company announced that another set of data from the hack, containing over 100 million LinkedIn members' emails and passwords, has now been released.

In response, LinkedIn says it is working to validate the accounts and contact affected users so they can take appropriate steps to change their password on the site.

According to a new report from Motherboard, a hacker simply known as 'Peace' is trying to sell the emails and passwords of 117 million LinkedIn members on a dark web illegal marketplace for about $2,200, payable in bitcoin.

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Back in 2012, hackers broke into LinkedIn's network, stole about 6.5 million encrypted passwords,  and posted them on a Russian hacker forum.

LinkedIn says it has beefed up its security since then via stronger encryption, email challenges, and two-factor authentications. Read the full text of LinkedIn's statement below:

"In 2012, LinkedIn was the victim of an unauthorized access and disclosure of some members’ passwords. At the time, our immediate response included a mandatory password reset for all accounts we believed were compromised as a result of the unauthorized disclosure. Additionally, we advised all members of LinkedIn to change their passwords as a matter of best practice.

Yesterday, we became aware of an additional set of data that had just been released that claims to be email and hashed password combinations of more than 100 million LinkedIn members from that same theft in 2012. We are taking immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of the accounts impacted, and we will contact those members to reset their passwords. We have no indication that this is as a result of a new security breach.

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We take the safety and security of our members’ accounts seriously. For several years, we have hashed and salted every password in our database, and we have offered protection tools such as email challenges and dual factor authentication. We encourage our members to visit our safety center to learn about enabling two-step verification, and to use strong passwords in order to keep their accounts as safe as possible."

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