Yahoo confirmed the 2014 breach in an announcement this morning, saying computer hackers swiped personal information from at least 500 million accounts in what is believed to be the biggest digital break-in at an email provider.
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The news comes in the form of a statement from Yahoo who have revealed what data has been breached, and this includes usernames, emails, passwords and more. Information including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and hashed passwords may have been stolen.
Yahoo said it believes no payment-related data, such as credit cards and bank account information, have been affected.
Yahoo announced Thursday that it had been the victim of a massive hacking that compromised at least 500 million user accounts, with the company claiming the breach was sponsored by a government.
Yahoo is also recommending Yahoo Account Key, an authentication tool that does away the need to use a password altogether. Users will be asked to change their passwords.
The internet pioneer urged users to alter their passwords if they did not since 2014.
It is not yet known if the breach will have an impact on that sale or its valuation.
“A recent investigation by Yahoo!” “You’d hope that Yahoo would’ve since thought about adopting more advanced encryption technology that secures data in individual pieces rather than in large sets, as well as empowering it to rigorously control access”.
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He echoed Yahoo’s advice for users to change their passwords and added that companies must also take further measures to protect user data. All Xtra customers who have not changed their password or security questions since 2014, or are unsure if they have, should do so now on the Spark website using this link: www.spark.co.nz/changepassword. “There is no way that this much data could be stolen without encryption being used to get the data out of the Yahoo network; if it hadn’t been, alarm bells would have rung loud and clear”, he said. What the hacker peace_of_mind was selling was different from the Yahoo breach. In a statement, Verizon said that it was made aware of the breach within the last two days and had limited information about the matter.
