Hacker put up for sale 167 million LinkedIn network accounts

At one of the popular trading platforms of the “shadow Internet” The Real Deal , an offer appeared to sell 167 million user accounts on the social network LinkedIn. Of these, 117 million have hashed passwords, which, however, are not too hard to crack. The last time LinkedIn released information about its work, she reported that a total of 433 million users were registered in the database.

The database contains the user ID, email and password hash. The hacker asks for this database only 5 BTC (about $ 2,270) and promises to confirm the authenticity by searching for the required e-mail in the database.
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Security experts who study the database confirm its authenticity, and indicate that this information leaked from LinkedIn in 2012. The then huge leak led to the emergence of 6.5 million public accounts in the public domain. However, then the social network did not confirm the leak, did not tell how many users it affected, stubbornly kept silence, and therefore this story was successfully forgotten.

Experts warn that passwords hashes are SHA1 without “salt”, and therefore their selection on modern equipment seems to be quite possible. The site LeakedSource , which possesses, among other things, this leaked database, invites everyone to search for their username or their email address in databases (containing more than a billion entries). But in any case, since 2012, users have had to change their password, and even after reports of leaks - all the more.

Now the network has issued a statement in which it assures users that it has since strengthened security measures, has introduced hash salt and two-factor authentication, which it recommends using for security purposes to all users.

The Real Deal website works as a hidden Tor service. This is a marketplace that takes a percentage of transactions and provides escrow services. In addition to the leaked data, it is possible to acquire various exploits on the site, as well as physical products such as drugs, weapons, fakes and other illegal goods.