The ghost of the past has come back to haunt LinkedIn: the 2012 data breach that led to an unauthorized release of member details is now rearing its head again with an additional set of member data exposed. LinkedIn announced that it's now invalidating the hacked passwords and alerting those members to reset their passwords.

The social media site yesterday clarified that the additional data released from the 2012 breach was likely to be the “email and hashed password combinations of more than 100 million LinkedIn members from that same theft in 2012.” 

Online magazine Motherboard this week reported that a hacker is trying to sell the account information of 117 million LinkedIn users. Motherboard said the hacker has indicated there are 167 million accounts in the hacked database, of which 117 million have both emails and encrypted passwords. Back in 2012, details of only around 6.5 million accounts were posted online, says Motherboard.

LinkedIn is now invalidating passwords for all accounts not changed before the 2012 breach and trying to identify and block suspicious activity on affected accounts.

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