Yahoo is facing its biggest cyber attack humiliation of all times as a 3-year old security breach is said to have exposed credentials of more than 1 billion users. As per the Yahoo Tech, this is touted as the biggest security breach in the history of Yahoo, surpassing its past record of 2015 which exposed at least 500 million user account credentials.
What’s more astonishing is that both the breaches occurred during the regime of Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer.
Yahoo believes that the data leak took place in August 2013 which made a hacker expose the data of more than 500 users on the dark web last year. Officials at the Californian giant’s headquarters believe that the latest exposure of more than 1 billion credentials was made by the same hacker who intruded into the database of Yahoo on a previous note.
As per the Prima Facie of Yahoo’s security team, the stolen info includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, security questions & answers. Currently, the exposed info by the hacker includes only these credentials. But the company believes that the hacker might also possess’ vital data such as bank account info and payment card data.
Yahoo who has more than 1 billion active users on a monthly note admitted that the hacker/s have managed to steal the passwords from the database as well. However, those passwords will technically be secure as they are scrambled twice by hashing and encryption which makes its impossible to break.
But according to Symantec, hackers are now being offered certain cloud-based services on the dark web which offers huge dictionaries of assembling and cracking secured passwords within no time. Usually, these types of services are being offered by companies doing business from certain parts of Asia, Nigeria, and South America.
So, for all those yahoo users who use the same passwords for other online accounts, the latest leak of 1 billion user credentials can spell a big trouble.
Yahoo after getting a report from FBI has issued an official statement last year that the 2013 attack was likely the work of a foreign nation which filters info about specific people. The security agency came to the conclusion based on the reality that the stolen info was never published on the web for monetary benefits. In fact, it was exposed to public either to show the vulnerability of web services giant when it comes to data security or to filter out email data of some big wigs of US politics.
As per the financial experts, the latest hack of Yahoo Users can easily jeopardize the ongoing deal of Verizon acquiring Yahoo in early 2017.
However, Yahoo’s 4-year CEO Marissa Mayer is believed to have full potential to pull out Yahoo out of any big trouble and so the latest hacking saga might just be one such incident.
