3 billion Yahoo accounts hacked - (week 8)

In August of 2013, Yahoo experienced the largest data breach in history. All 3 billion of their users had their accounts hacked. This included their other services such as Yahoo email, Tumblr, Fantasy, and Flickr. They stole email addresses and passwords, but no financial information was reported to be stolen. (Larson, 2017)

Originally, it was thought to be a much lower number of affected accounts but Verizon, the owner of Yahoo which is now a part of their digital media company called Oath, made the following statement in 2017; “The company recently obtained new intelligence and now believes, following an investigation with the assistance of outside forensic experts, that all Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft.” (Larson, 2017)

Cyber forensic specialists say that it is very odd for outside services to find more victims than what was originally thought. Usually, a business will over estimate to factor in the amount lost and the cost for clean-up. The recent Equifax breach was thought to have affected over 100,000 clients, but after further investigation that number was changed to 8,000. (Larson, 2017)

2013 wasn’t the only time that Yahoo was attacked. In 2014, they were hit again and this attack affected over 500 million users. This attack is thought to be a completely separate hack and not related to the 2013 attack. While it is unclear who conducted the attack in 2013, the 2014 attack was contributed to four people; two Russian spies and two assisting hackers. (Larson, 2017)

To prevent further loss of data, Yahoo required all users to reset their passwords. They also required that answers to security questions be changed since they were not encrypting that information. Yahoo is now using two-factor authentication for accounts to prevent data loss if another attack does occur. (Larson, 2017)

 

Larson, S. (2017, October 4). Every single Yahoo account was hacked - 3 billion in all. Retrieved from CNN Business: https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/technology/business/yahoo-breach-3-billion-accounts/index.html