NEW YORK - The silence of LinkedIn on the magnitude of the security breach that left the passwords of millions of users exposed has damaged its reputation among some business professionals and may slow the rise of the company if the breach is more severe than shown so far.
Several days after news emerged of password thefts, the page with over 160 million members keeps saying it has yet to determine the full extent of the lapse.
Cybersecurity experts say the social network did not have adequate protection and warn that the company could unveil more losses of data in the next few days while trying to find out what happened.
LinkedIn has hired security experts to help the engineers of the company and the FBI determine how more than six million customers passwords landed on pages of “cibersubmundo”, a page for cyber criminals frequented by pirates.
The company spokesman Hani Durzy said that LinkedIn had invalidated accounts with stolen passwords despite not knowing if other information has been stolen from the accounts.
LinkedIn was notifying customers who had their passwords stolen on Friday afternoon, days after the first news about it came to light.
Laura DiDio, an analyst at technology consulting firm ITIC, said it was not fast enough.
“I’m angry. As soon as they said there was a gap, they should have been there. I want to know what they are doing to correct the situation,” she said.
