Yahoo, the world’s second most popular web search giant has finally agreed to pay $50 million in damages for the historic cyber attack which led to the data breach of more than 1 billion Yahoo user accounts.
The hack which took place in between 2013 and 2014 was revealed to the world in 2016 by then Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Ms. Mayer reported that approximately 200 million accounts could have been compromised in the cyber attack.
On Tuesday i.e. October 23rd, 2018 Yahoo agreed to provide two years of free credit monitoring services to those affected. That means all those whose email addresses and other personal info were stolen in the historic hack will get a free 2-year credit monitoring service.
Sources reporting to Cyber Security Insiders say that the settlement was made by Yahoo on Monday based on the federal court’s approval in the 2-year-old lawsuit which made Yahoo accountable for the digital burglaries. The court discovered in the prosecution that the hack disclosed info such as email addresses, usernames, date of births and telephone numbers.
In the year 2017, when reports were ripe that telecom giant Verizon was going to buy Yahoo, news began to circulate which said that the number of Yahoo users impacted by the cyber attack could reach the 3 billion mark.
During the 2-year long prosecution, the San Francisco court found that 1 billion accounts pertaining to 200 million people were actually accessed by hackers in the cyber incident.
Although the New York Times believes that the hack was conducted by some state-sponsored hackers from Russia, there is no valid evidence to prove that the Vladimir Putin nation as guilty.
In early 2018, the company which stands as an utmost rival to Google said that the user passwords, credit card numbers and bank account info were not stolen in the attack.
Note 1- Yahoo is now a part of a company called Oath which is a business subsidiary of Verizon.
Note 2- Since the hack took place during the tenure of Marissa Mayer as Yahoo CEO, the lady chose to not take the 2016 bonus worth as much as $2 million.
