Yahoo Security Failure: Over 1 Billion Accounts Hacked; Biggest Hacking Incident Ever

By Karen Diaz | Dec 16, 2016 04:20 AM EST

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Many people were alarmed after Yahoo announced the global breach of accounts in which many of the user's information were hacked. But it seems like the hacking got even worse, Yahoo revealed that 1 billion accounts are already stolen and it says that it is the biggest hacking incident ever.

Yahoo announced last September (2 moths after Verizon announced its plan to acquire the company) that some of the user's accounts since 2014 were stolen in which 500 million accounts were infected, previous report from Jobs & Hire.

And then on Wednesday, the company announced once again that hacking got even worse than before because 1 billion accounts were already hacked, as per Gizmodo. Yahoo revealed that the user's data that was recovered by the authorities is a different hack which affects almost 1 billion account used "b" as user's name. According to the company's CISO - Bob Lord - after the forensic experts analyzes the data, an unauthorized third party (since 2013) stole the data of the user's account and information. The serious investigation began last summer, but the company confirmed that some of the Yahoo employees already knew that accounts were compromised since 2014.

The company advised those who think that their account might be infected or the "potentially affected users" to protect their account by changing the passwords and exclude some personal information especially those accounts that are bank-related. High profile hackers has more advanced tools that's why it is easy for them to steal such informations. These stolen information includes the email addresses, names, passwords, telephone numbers, and other personal informations. It is the biggest data breach covering 1 billion stolen accounts, as reported.

Yahoo though remains to be positive that Verizon will still pursue to acquire the company. But in another report, Verizon might change its mind merging with the company because of this security incident.

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