Yahoo says hackers stole information from over 1B accounts

By The Associated Press

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Yahoo says it believes hackers stole data from more than one billion user accounts in August 2013, in what is thought to be the largest data breach at an email provider.

 

The Sunnyvale, California, company was also home to what's now most likely the second largest hack in history, one that exposed 500 million Yahoo accounts . The company disclosed that breach in September. Yahoo said it hasn't identified the intrusion associated with this theft.

 

Yahoo says the information stolen may include names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdates and security questions and answers. The company says it believes bank-account information and payment-card data were not affected.

 

But the company said hackers may have also stolen passwords from the affected accounts. Technically, those passwords should be secure; Yahoo said they were scrambled twice — once by encryption and once by another technique called hashing. But hackers have become adept at cracking secured passwords by assembling huge dictionaries of similarly scrambled phrases and matching them against stolen password databases.

 

That could mean trouble for any users who reused their Yahoo password for other online accounts.

 

QUESTIONS FOR VERIZON

 

The new hack revelation raises fresh questions about Verizon's $4.8 billion proposed acquisition of Yahoo, and whether the big mobile carrier will seek to modify or abandon its bid. If the hacks cause a user backlash against Yahoo, the company's services wouldn't be as valuable to Verizon. The telecom giant wants Yahoo and its many users to help it build a digital ad business.

 

In a statement, Verizon said that it will evaluate the situation as Yahoo investigates and will review the "new development before reaching any final conclusions." Spokesman Bob Varettoni declined to answer further questions.

 

Yahoo said Wednesday that it is requiring users to change their passwords and invalidating security questions so they can't be used to hack into accounts.

 

-- © Associated Press 2016-12-15

Will they blame it on the Russians? ?

"That could mean trouble for any users who reused their Yahoo [sic any host] password for other online accounts."

 

Nup. Everyone has a different password for every online account.

2013? Thanks for timely sharing of news we could use....

1 hour ago, stag4 said:

Will they blame it on the Russians? ?

And the Russians will say that they were too busy Hacking Hilary Clinton.

This would be the same Yahoo that prevented me from setting up an Opera mail client, due to their seeing my account as currently not enabled for sign-in from '... apps that do not meet modern security standards ...'

Lucky me that I don't trust anything on line. Anyone reading my account will be very bored.

 

7 hours ago, optad said:

"That could mean trouble for any users who reused their Yahoo [sic any host] password for other online accounts."

 

Nup. Everyone has a different password for every online account.

 

Everyone *should*....

 

Actually I'm one of the many that uses the same password for all of the insignificant accounts that are meaningless if they are hacked. IBM studied this in depth, and found that people who do this tend to take more care of the accounts that really do need protecting, of which I have only a handful; the main factor being that the less time you spend worrying about passwords et al for the unimportant stuff, the more time you have to concentrate on the ones of which you should take special care.

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/15/europe/who-are-russians-behind-yahoo-hack/index.html

 

Quote

 

Who are the Russians who allegedly hacked Yahoo?

The indictment alleges that Dokuchaev and another FSB officer, Igor Sushchin, "protected, directed, facilitated, and paid their co-conspirators to collect information through computer intrusions in the United States and elsewhere."

 

 

What's strange is they are under arrest for helping the CIA! LOL