Yahoo Admits That "At Least" 500 Million Accounts May Have Been Compromised

Yahoo!, which is in the process of having its core business purchased by Verizon, copped to suffering the largest hack in the history of the Internet earlier today.

In a message titled "An Important Message to Yahoo Users on Security", Yahoo! admitted that a likely "state-sponsored actor" penetrated their system sometime in 2014. During this intrusion, Yahoo! estimates that the hacker swiped information from "at least" 500 million different user accounts.

Yahoo stated that the hack could have resulted in the following information being swiped:

-name
-email address
-telephone number
-date of birth
-hashed passwords
-encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers

Yahoo said that other information, such as credit card data and unprotected passwords, was not taken as it was stored on a separate system.

As mentioned, this was the largest "hack" in the history of the Internet, surpassing MySpace's infamous hack by tens of millions of users.

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This is yet another black eye for the reign of Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, as she certainly did not want the largest ever hack to take place on her watch.

Verizon won a bidding war to acquire Yahoo's core business earlier in the year, so they are willingly taking on this mess if they proceed with the deal. What kind of impact this intrusion will have on Yahoo's core business is yet to be seen. Will Verizon still proceed with the deal at this point? I'm assuming that they can still walk away from the deal at this point, as they are likely still in the due diligence period that is normally included in other similar deals.

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If you have a Yahoo! account and haven't changed your password since 2014, Yahoo! is strongly advising you to change your password now.

Filed under: General Knowledge