If you’ve ever been a Yahoo customer, we’d suggest changing your passwords pretty sharpish.
In one of the biggest security breaches ever, the former internet giant has confirmed hackers have accessed the data of more than one billion user accounts.
Yahoo confirmed the attack occurred back in August 2013, although the company’s chief information security officer, Bob Lord, has revealed: “We have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft.”
Making the announcement in an official blog post, Lord stated: “We believe an unauthorised third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion user accounts.
“For potentially affected accounts, the stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.”
Despite losing much of their personal information, Yahoo has assured users that their bank details remain safe.
“The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information,” Lord’s statement read.
Entering damage limitation mode, Yahoo has offered some less than sage advice to its users.
Although being more than three years behind the curve, the firm has revealed it is in the process of notifying those potentially affected by the hack and is looking to secure these accounts.
In particularly unhelpful advice, the company it’s urging all users to change their passwords and security questions on all sites where they’ve used the same information as on Yahoo, and avoid clicking on suspicious looking links. Cheers guys, we wouldn’t have figured that out without you.
This isn’t the first time Yahoo has been the victim of a major security breach either.
Just a couple of months ago the firm revealed data had been stolen from more than 500 million accounts. It’s not believed the two attacks are linked.
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Are you worried about the latest Yahoo hack? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
