The company is set to announce a massive data breach, according to sources speaking to tech website Recode.
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Sources said the breach became known in August, when “Peace” said on a website that he was selling the data of 200 million Yahoo users from 2012 on the dark web for United States dollars 1,800.
Reports of the security breach come just as Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is about to close a deal that ends the once-dominant internet firm’s independence. The data allegedly included user names, easily decrypted passwords, personal information like birth dates and other email addresses. Numerous datasets were uploaded by the same mysterious “Peace” hacker, however it remains unclear how the user records were initially compromised. One of Recode’s sources described this recent hack as “worse” than that. Sources, who remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the disclosure, said that consequences of the announcement could include government investigations or even legal action and branded the hack as “widespread and serious”. The hacker, known as Peace, had previously sold data dumps of MySpace and LinkedIn users. However, in the wake of the incident, Yahoo failed to enforce a password reset for its billions of users.
The timing couldn’t be worse for Yahoo, at a time when it is negotiating a $4.8B sale of most of its business to Verizon.
Confirmation of the devastating hack could have serious implications on the $4.8 billion (around £3.7 billion) sale of Yahoo’s core business – believed to be at the centre of this hack – to United States telecoms giant, Verizon.
When Motherboard contacted Yahoo about the data release in August, a spokesperson told the website: “We are aware of a claim”, and said it was investigating the information.
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The telecommunications company will pick up services that still draw one billion monthly users, including mail, news and sports content and financial tools.
