AMU Emergency Management Public Safety

Yahoo Reveals Yet Another Massive Data Breach

Yahoo reveals another severe data breach

Tech giant Yahoo announced yesterday the discovery of a massive data breach, and stated that the cyber attack could impact upwards of a billion accounts.

In [link url=”https://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/154479236569/important-security-information-for-yahoo-users” title=”an official announcement”], Yahoo revealed that a vast breach occurred in August 2013. The breach affected more than a billion user accounts, making it the largest data breach in history.

“… we believe an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion user accounts. 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.” — [link url=”https://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/154479236569/important-security-information-for-yahoo-users” title=”Official announcement from Yahoo”]

Second major breach revealed this year

Back in September 2016, the company announced the discovery of a [link url=”https://amuedge.com/half-billion-yahoo-accounts-hacked/” title=”massive breach that occurred in 2014″]. That breach, according to Yahoo, affected about 500 million accounts.

This latest breach announced yesterday involves more than double that amount.

https://twitter.com/YahooInc/status/809155089797681152

More than just account credentials

Yahoo announced that this 1-billion account cyber attack that reaches back to 2013 affects more than just user account credentials. Yahoo accounts affected by this latest breach could have included additional personal information.

Stolen user data may include names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords, and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.

With cyber criminals potentially gaining access to passwords and/or security questions/answers, other, non-Yahoo accounts of affected users could be at risk. Cyber criminals can use that type of information in brute force login attacks, where they attempt to gain access to other accounts around the Web owned by the same user.

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