Yahoo has disclosed a new data breach which is said to have occurred in August 2013. The company says the attack affected around 1 billion users and it’s separate from the attack reported in September 2016 – affecting around 500 million accounts in 2014.
After analyzing the data given by law enforcement, Yahoo claims account information like names, telephone numbers, date of birth, email addresses, security questions, and hashed passwords were compromised by the attackers. However, it didn’t include data like credit card details and bank account information, as it wasn’t stored on the hacked server.
In the case of the 2014 attack, Yahoo has tied links to some state-sponsored attacker, who gained access to Yahoo’s proprietary source code and created forged cookies to compromise user accounts.
Verizon is already in the process of acquiring Yahoo for $4.8 billion, and the company has negotiation terms in mind due to multiple hacking incidents like this. Yahoo has also been accused of creating email scanning software to scan people’s email on behalf of the US government. It was known that Yahoo’s CEO Merissa Mayer gave a green signal without seeking any advice from the security department.
Yahoo users are getting a email to confirm whether they are been affected by this data breach. The Email format goes this way:
NOTICE OF DATA BREACH
Dear Yahoo User,
We are writing to inform you about a data security issue that may involve your Yahoo account information. We have taken steps to secure your account and are working closely with law enforcement.
What Happened?
Law enforcement provided Yahoo in November 2016 with data files that a third party claimed was Yahoo user data. We analyzed this data with the assistance of outside forensic experts and found that it appears to be Yahoo user data. Based on further analysis of this data by the forensic experts, we believe an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with a broader set of user accounts, including yours. We have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft. We believe this incident is likely distinct from the incident we disclosed on September 22, 2016.
What Information Was Involved?
The stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. Not all of these data elements may have been present for your account. The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system we believe was affected.
What We Are Doing
We are taking action to protect our users:
What You Can Do
- We are requiring potentially affected users to change their passwords.
- We invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers so that they cannot be used to access an account.
- We continuously enhance our safeguards and systems that detect and prevent unauthorized access to user accounts.
We encourage you to follow these security recommendations:
Additionally, please consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password on Yahoo altogether.
- Change your passwords and security questions and answers for any other accounts on which you used the same or similar information used for your Yahoo account.
- Review all of your accounts for suspicious activity.
- Be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information.
- Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails.
For More Information
For more information about this issue and our security resources, please visit the Yahoo Security Issues FAQs page available at https://yahoo.com/security-update.
Protecting your information is important to us and we work continuously to strengthen our defenses.
Sincerely,
Bob Lord
Chief Information Security Officer
Yahoo
