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Yahoo points to ‘state backed actor’ for huge cyber attack
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YAHOO said a massive attack on its network in 2014 allowed hackers to steal data from half a billion users and may have been state backed.
Yahoo, which confirmed details of the breach months after reports of a major hack, said yesterday its investigation had concluded that “certain user account information was stolen” and that the attack came from “what it believes is a state-sponsored actor.”
“Based on the ongoing investigation, Yahoo believes that information associated with at least 500 million user accounts was stolen,” said the US internet giant in what is likely the largest-ever breach for a single organization.
The comments come after a report earlier this year quoted a security researcher saying some 200 million accounts may have been accessed and that hacked data was being offered for sale online.
Yahoo said the stolen information may have included names, email addresses, birth dates, and scrambled passwords, along with encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers that could help hackers to break into victims’ other online accounts.
While there is no official record of the largest breaches, analysts have called the Myspace hack revealed earlier this year as the largest to date, with 360 million users affected.
Computer security analyst Graham Cluley said the stolen Yahoo data could be useful ammunition for any hacker attempting to break into Yahoo accounts, or interested in exploring whether users might have used the same security questions/answers to protect themselves on the web.
He noted that while Yahoo said that it believes the hack was state-sponsored, the company provided no details regarding what makes them think that is the case.
“If I had to break the bad news that my company had been hacked ... I would feel much happier saying that the attackers were state-sponsored,” rather than teen hackers, Cluley said in a blog post.
It appeared that looted Yahoo data did not include unprotected passwords or information associated with payments or bank accounts, the Silicon Valley company said.
Yahoo is asking affected users to change passwords, and recommending anyone who has not done so since 2014 to take the same action as a precaution.
Users of Yahoo online services were urged to review accounts for suspicious activity and change passwords and security question information used to log in anywhere else if it matched that at Yahoo.
“Online intrusions and thefts by state-sponsored actors have become increasingly common across the technology industry,” Yahoo said.
“Yahoo and other companies have launched programs to detect and notify users when a company strongly suspects that a state-sponsored actor has targeted an account.”
Confirmation of the major cyber breach comes two months after Yahoo sealed a deal to sell its core internet business to telecom giant Verizon for US$4.8 billion, ending a two-decade run as an independent company.
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