By Jim Finkle and Jennifer Saba

LinkedIn Corp's silence on the extent of a security breach that exposed millions of user passwords has damaged its reputation among some business professionals, and may slow the growing company's rise if the breach turns out to be more serious than disclosed.

Several days after news of the theft of the passwords emerged, the site with more than 160 million members still says it has yet to determine the full extent of the breach.

Some cyber security experts say LinkedIn did not have adequate protections in place, and warn that the company could uncover further data-losses over coming days as it tries to figure out what happened.

LinkedIn has hired outside forensics experts to assist as company engineers and the FBI seek to determine how more than 6 million customer passwords turned up on underground sites frequented by criminal hackers.

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Source: Reuters