Marissa Mayer, the former Chief Executive of Yahoo Inc, has publicly disclosed that Russia launched cyberattacks on at least one occasion to steal Yahoo User Data. Mrs. Mayer also rendered her apology to all the Yahoo users, as the data theft occurred during her tenure.
Testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee, alongside the interim and former CEOs of Equifax Inc, Marissa Mayer stated that nations like Russia, China, and North Korea are turning into serious cyber threats to the United States. And unless they are tamed by the White House under the regime of Donald Trump, their indulgence in launching state-funded cyber attacks will remain interminable.
Note- Verizon, the largest US wireless Communication Company acquired most the shares in Yahoo in June this year and from then on Mrs. Mayer was asked to step down from the CEO post. Due to a 2013 data breach which led to the data leak of more than 1 billion user data on the dark web, Yahoo had to offer a discount of 400 million to Verizon for the take over to progress.
In March this year, two Russian Intelligence officers were prosecuted by the United States for masterminding a data theft of more than 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014. At this stage, Yahoo learned that the hackers behind their data breach were from Russia.
Ms. Mayer also said that Yahoo has not been able to identify how the 2013 intrusion occurred until the US Government presented data to Yahoo in November 2016. She added that all Yahoo users who were impacted by the cyber attack were asked to change passwords in order to secure their accounts.
