“Based on the ongoing investigation, Yahoo believes that information associated with at least 500 million user accounts was stolen”, a statement from the US Internet giant.
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“As law enforcement and regulators examine this incident, they should investigate whether Yahoo may have concealed its knowledge of this breach in order to artificially bolster its valuation in its pending acquisition by Verizon”, Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator from CT, said.
Yahoo says “state-sponsored” hackers stole the data of about 500 million users in what could be the largest publicly disclosed cyber-breach in history.
Yahoo says the breach involved users’ email addresses, passwords and other information – including birthdates – but not payment card or bank account numbers.
Millions of Yahoo users may have had information stolen according to a recent investigation.
Yahoo said it is notifying any potentially affected users and asking any users that have not changed their passwords in the last two years to do so.
The hack, disclosed by Yahoo on Thursday, was allegedly committed by a “state-sponsored actor” on behalf of a foreign government, according to the company.
“They have access to your bank accounts, social media and pretty much every online account you have attached to that email, they have access!” “The attack came from what is believed to be a State-sponsored actor”.
Additionally, Yahoo has asked users to consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password altogether. “Yahoo may very well be facing an existential crisis”, said Corey Williams, senior director of products and marketing at the computer security firm Centrify.
Moorhead said the news is embarrassing for Yahoo whether or not the company failed to discover the breach in a timely manner. More recently, news reports say USA intelligence officials have blamed Russian spies for the hack of Democratic National Committee files, although Russia’s government has also denied this. The company said users’ financial information had not been compromised.
Verizon agrees to purchase Yahoo on July 25, 2016.
While motivation for those cyberattacks seems clear, it might initially appear less obvious why countries such as Russia, North Korea or even China would target a company like Yahoo.
“Either they knew about it and didn’t say anything”, he said, which could open up Yahoo to questions of hiding information.
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Reset this password, if you’re reusing it on other online sites. Mayer, who has dealt with difficulties and complaints about Yahoo’s e-mail service in the past, needs to keep users logging in to drive traffic and draw the advertising that fuels the company’s revenue growth, which has been sluggish under her leadership.
