"Most people use the same questions and answers on multiple sites, even for the corporate ones," Bussie added.Įven though it may be time-consuming, he advises that affected users change their passwords and security questions, not just at Yahoo, but across all their internet accounts.Īs shocking as the size of the breach is, security experts aren't surprised it happened. The stolen data from Yahoo also includes the security questions and answers used to protect their accounts. However, the stolen data from Yahoo can be used in other ways to attack victims, Bussie said. The stolen email addresses alone put users at risk of spam attacks and the additional information could be used to trick users into divulging more information about themselves. The company added that most of the passwords stolen were hashed with bcrypt, making them exceptionally difficult to crack. Yahoo is already notifying the affected users, and working with law enforcement to investigate the incident. "We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon interests," the company said. It said on Thursday that it had only learned about the breach within the last two days. The hack also surprised Verizon, which recently agreed to acquire Yahoo. "They (Yahoo) were probably trying to find the best way to break this info to the press." "This is probably the worst thing that could have happened," said Brad Bussie, director of product management at Stealthbits Technologies.
Why it took so long for Yahoo to find out and inform the public wasn't clear from the company's statement on the breach. Security experts like Holden have noted that some people rely on Yahoo email for work purposes, putting corporate information potentially at risk. "Yahoo was once the number one email provider."Īccording to Yahoo, the breach disclosed on Thursday involved data taken from late 2014 - meaning hackers had two years to secretly capitalize on what they stole. "The Yahoo data breach will have a much bigger impact than almost any other breach that I can speak of," Holden said.
0 kommentar(er)
