The IT Nerd

It’s happened again to Yahoo. Over ONE BILLION accounts have been reported as being hacked. Here’s what CNET is saying:

The stolen data included users’ names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and encrypted passwords. Those passwords are scrambled up with an encryption tool called MD5, which experts say is possible to crack with some patience. The data also included some security questions and answers, some of which weren’t encrypted.

“Yahoo is notifying potentially affected users and has taken steps to secure their accounts, including requiring users to change their passwords,” the company said in a statement. “Yahoo has also invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers so that they cannot be used to access an account.”

The hack revealed Wednesday occurred in August of 2013.

This is after Yahoo disclosed that they were hacked to the tune of half a billion accounts last year.

All together now. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

If that’s not shocking enough, Verizon is still talking about buying Yahoo, a process that they started last year. Though Verizon did give the deal a billion dollar haircut. The fact that Verizon could continue to talk of a deal after the last Yahoo breach is amazing. If Verizon continues with an additional billion accounts being hacked, it shows that neither the market nor the establishment can penalize egregious data loss. 

Expect Yahoo to get some scrutiny from congress again.

This entry was posted on December 14, 2016 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.