Yahoo announced on Thursday that the account information of at least 500 million users was stolen by hackers two years ago, in the biggest known intrusion of one company’s computer network.
In a statement, Yahoo said user information — including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, encrypted passwords and, in some cases, security questions — was compromised in 2014 by what it believed was a “state-sponsored actor”.
While Yahoo did not name the country involved, how the company discovered the hack nearly two years after the fact offered a glimpse at the complicated and mysterious world of the underground web.
Nicole Perlroth
Ironic how companies regularly prompt users to add more data to secure their online accounts – especially phone numbers – thereby giving hackers more personal information to steal. Good thing I never gave Yahoo! my phone number despite their insistence.
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