Users who might be affected are to be contacted by Yahoo, asked to change their passwords, and to use other ways of verifying their account.
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Many Yahoo users have built their digital identities around it through their bank accounts to photo albums and even medical information.
“A recent investigation by Yahoo. has confirmed that a copy of certain user account information was stolen from the company’s network in late 2014 by what it believes is a state-sponsored actor”, the company wrote in a statement.
Yahoo users login credentials have been compromised giving hackers access to their date of birth as well as security questions and answers that they use for setting up their accounts.
Sky, which owns Sky News, said: “Sky takes the security of our customers’ data and information extremely seriously”. Yahoo has notified that they are invalidating existing security questions of its users.
Hackers managed to steal data from 500 million Yahoo email accounts and the tech giant is now under pressure to explain how the cyberattack happened.
Spark is now reminding all its customers to change their password and security questions for their Xtra account and any other account which they used the same or similar information.
With no password on your Yahoo account no one can sign in but you, as long as you have your smartphone. To make matters worse this massive data breach goes beyond usernames and passwords.
“This may be the largest-scale hack ever but I’ve simply become accustomed to it”, he said, adding that his personal blog receives attempted hacks every hour.
Yahoo declined comment, but its top security official, Bob Lord, has said the company would make that claim only “when we have a high degree of confidence”.
“There are lots of people, millions of people, who don’t understand they have a Yahoo account”, said Per Thorsheim, a global cybersecurity expert based in Norway.
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First up “change your password and security questions and answers”, on Yahoo. In that disclosure, Yahoo said the information was stolen from its network in late 2014 by a “state-sponsored actor”. The content of the email Yahoo is sending to those users will be available at this here (yahoo.com/security-notice-content). He noted that the 2010 attack on Google was blamed on Chinese hackers who also targeted US companies outside the tech industry. Using different passwords significantly limits the potential damage an exposed password could entail.
