LinkedIn Faces $5 Million Lawsuit for Embarrassing Security Breach
Social networking site LinkedIn reportedly faces a $5 million class action lawsuit over a recent security breach that compromised the passwords of millions of members. The suit was filed by Katie Szpyrka in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California.
Szpyrka says LinkedIn "failed to properly safeguard its users' digitally stored personally identifiable information, including email addresses, passwords, and login credentials," ZDNet reports. As a result, she wants LinkedIn to cough up $5 million in damages, which works out to less than a dollar for each of the 6.46 million passwords that were compromised.
Image Credit: LinkedIn
While these things happen, Szyprka takes issue with LinkedIn's failure to 'salt' the hashed passwords stored on its database, which would have made the code tougher to crack. She also isn't thrilled that LinkedIn succumbed to a fairly common SQL injection attack, and for waiting until third parties announced the breach before going public with it.
Szpyrka says LinkedIn "failed to properly safeguard its users' digitally stored personally identifiable information, including email addresses, passwords, and login credentials," ZDNet reports. As a result, she wants LinkedIn to cough up $5 million in damages, which works out to less than a dollar for each of the 6.46 million passwords that were compromised.
Image Credit: LinkedIn
While these things happen, Szyprka takes issue with LinkedIn's failure to 'salt' the hashed passwords stored on its database, which would have made the code tougher to crack. She also isn't thrilled that LinkedIn succumbed to a fairly common SQL injection attack, and for waiting until third parties announced the breach before going public with it.
