Be careful ! For several weeks, many users have seen their LinkedIn account hacked, to the point of completely losing access to it or having to pay a ransom to recover it. Caution is required!
Keep a watchful eye on your LinkedIn accounts right now! The social network dedicated to professionals is currently the victim of a wave of hacks, all over the world – including in France. Since the beginning of August, many users have reported losing access to their accounts, as reported by researchers at Cyberint. Some accounts were simply deleted, while victims had to pay a ransom to recover them! Of course, the hackers have previously taken care to send fraudulent messages to the relationships of the hacked accounts through the private messaging of the social network.
LinkedIn hacking: hackers attack the social network
The researchers identified numerous testimonials on social networks and on Reddit. “My account was hacked six days ago. The email address was changed in the middle of the night and I haven’t had a chance to confirm the change or prevent it”, wrote one user. Two scenarios stand out distinctly. In the first case, victims had temporarily blocked access to the account due to repeated hacking attempts. – with a brute force attack on passwords for example –; on the other, the accounts were completely blocked by the hack, with a change of email address and password carried out by the hackers.
The researchers also noticed that Google queries like LinkedIn account hacked have exploded in the last 90 days, which could indicate that the campaign started in early May, with a strong increase this summer. Once they have their hands on the LinkedIn account, the hackers take the opportunity to attack the victims’ other social networks or even their Steam account. Some were even forced to pay a ransom to get them back.
LinkedIn Hacking: Strawberry Customer Service
To take over LinkedIn accounts, attackers may use credentials recovered through online leaks or hacks of major platforms, or through brute force technique – which consists in testing, one after the other, each possible combination of a password. When hackers manage to take over poorly protected LinkedIn accounts, all they have to do is change the email address and password to make it impossible to recover the account.
LinkedIn’s IT support is particularly singled out by victims for its lack of responsiveness and efficiency. “They haven’t responded anywhere. Pathetic. Tried to report my account being hacked, go through ID verification, and even DM them @linkedinhelp on Twitter. No response zero This is a company that doesn’t care about anything…“, complains a user on X. If the social network has not yet made an official communication, cybersecurity researchers have noticed that the response time of the support has lengthened, with a high volume of requests for assistance .
In the event of hacking or attempted hacking, it is essential to contact LinkedIn customer service at this page, in order to report the hacking of the account, even if the response time is particularly long. If it is still possible, you must then change your password to adopt a complex one (uppercase, lowercase, numbers, special characters) and unique. Better to check all the current active sections and, if a message indicates that an additional email address has been added to the account, delete this address in question and modify its credentials. Finally, it is recommended to activate double authentication. To do this, go to the settings, then go to the “Identification and security” tab, and then to “Two-step verification”.