Data breach costs LinkedIn up to $1 million

LinkedIn announced the recuperation costs of the recent data breach could have topped $1 million.

Cheif financial officer Steve Sordello said the costs included forensic work and “other elements” relating to the breach.

He said the 175-million-member company continued to strengthen its website's security and is expected to add $2 million to $3 million in costs in the current quarter toward those efforts.

“Since [the breach], we have redoubled our efforts to ensure the safety of our member account on LinkedIn by further improving password-strengthening measures and enhancing the security of our infrastructure and data,” chief executive Jeff Weiner said during the second quarter results call.

“The health of our network as measured by number of growth and engagement remains as strong as it was prior to the incident.”

Earlier this year, attackers dumped 6,458,020 encrypted LinkedIn passwords on forum InsidePro seeking assistance in decoding them.

The stolen passwords were encrypted using an outdated SHA-1 hash function created by the National Security Agency.

In addition to this weakness, LinkedIn failed to add additional security layers, such as salting the passwords, a technique which randomly appends a string of characters.

Following the attack, LinkedIn confirmed in a blog post the addition of new security layers, including the salting of passwords.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com