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Hacker Allegedly Responsible for Massive 2012 LinkedIn Breach Arrested

On Tuesday, Czech police announced the arrest of an alleged hacker. Now, LinkedIn has claimed the individual is linked to the company’s 2012 breach.
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On Wednesday, LinkedIn claimed a Russian hacker recently arrested in Prague was linked to a 2012 breach of the company, that affected over 100 million user accounts.

Czech police, in cooperation with the FBI, announced it had arrested the unnamed, alleged hacker in Prague on Tuesday. This came after Interpol issued a Red Notice against the individual, meaning that he is wanted for extradition to the United States.

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"Following the 2012 breach of LinkedIn member information, we have remained actively involved with the FBI's case to pursue those responsible," a LinkedIn spokesperson told Motherboard in an email. "We are thankful for the hardwork and dedication of the FBI in its efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for this criminal activity."

According to Czech police, the man was detained in a hotel in Prague city center. He had driven a luxury car into the city, and was accompanied by his girlfriend. The man did not resist the arrest, but he did collapse, and had to be taken to hospital.

Motherboard previously reported that in 2012 hackers stole over 117 million user email addresses and passwords from LinkedIn. The data only surfaced this summer, along with a slew of other breaches encompassing tens and millions of customer details from Silicon Valley companies, including Myspace and Tumblr.

The hacker known as 'Peace' was the main person selling this data. Motherboard spoke to someone behind Peace's online chat account approximately 12 hours ago.

Another person connected to the LinkedIn breach was the hacker, turned eventual scammer, Tessa88. Tessa allegedly was part of the same cybercriminal group that Peace was, which researchers believed originally hacked LinkedIn and other companies.

When Motherboard tried to send Tessa a message on Wednesday it would not deliver, instead returning an error message.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai contributed reporting to this article.