Was Your LinkedIn Password Leaked?

LinkedIn users can check one of the LinkeIin password hack sites to see if their security was compromised.

LinkedIn user data was jeopardized Wednesday when reports surfaced that 6.5 million passwords were leaked and posted on a Russian hacker site. Websites offering a LinkedIn password hack check like LeakedIn quickly popped up so users could find out if their password was one of the 6.5 million -- or more -- leaked.

Don't fret, all may not be lost if you're one of the many who use the same password or a variant for your email and social networking logins. LeakedIn and LastPass, which also features a LinkedIn password check tool, enable users to check if their password was leaked. The sites change their LinkedIn password to a SHA-1 hash, which is then automatically compared to the 6.5 million-password database to determine if the password was hacked.

While users may be skeptical of handing over their LinkedIn password to one of these sites, the hash algorithm function converts the password into a series of characters. The process is extremely difficult to reverse, so the original password cannot be reconstructed from the hash outcome.

However, LastPass notes, it is possible to reconstruct the original from a SHA-1 hash if the password is relatively simple, such as a word in a dictionary. At this point, you probably want to beef up your security anyway by trading that weak password for a more complex one with numbers and special characters.

Here's what a good result will look like on each site.

LeakedIn:


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