On Thursday, Yahoo disclosed a big security breach which affects at least 500 million users. This incident took place in late 2014 when a copy of certain user account information was stolen from the company’s network. The company believes that the data was stolen by a ‘state-sponsored actor’.
Yahoo confirms that the accessed information includes email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.
This news came in the time when the company is closing its pending $4.8 billion deal. Verizon was also notified about the security breach but it denied to comment on the matter. It is not yet known if the breach will have an impact on this pending sale or its valuation.
Last month, Motherboard also reported that a hacker was selling 200 million Yahoo user accounts in a black-market online forum for about $1,860 worth of Bitcoin. At that time, Yahoo promised to investigate the claim and now we have a confirmed news on the same matter.
Yahoo confirmed that none of the stolen information included unprotected passwords, payment-card data, or bank-account information.
Yahoo recommends all users to change their passwords who have not changed passwords since 2014. It recommends all users to change their passwords and security questions to ensure the safety of their account.
