Sign outside a Yahoo office building. (Photo : YouTube/CNN Money )
When it comes to security of account information Yahoo has had trouble in the past with breaches and this time round over 1 billion user accounts were compromised.
Yahoo has had issues with users' account information being stolen in the past. However, the company found itself stumped this time round when they discovered that over 1 billion accounts had been stolen and they had not been aware of it.
The latest hack was explained by Yahoo in a blog post on Tumblr. In the post the company outlined that it was working with law enforcement officials who brought the hack to the notice of Yahoo by providing them with stolen user data. Based on the analysis of the data it was estimated that the user accounts were compromised in August 2013, but Yahoo importantly does not know how hackers got access to account information.
This particular hacking incident seems to be connected with the use of MD5 hashing algorithm which is no longer considered secure as information it hides can be easily discovered, TechCrunch reported. It went on to add that though the data breach was massive and bad news for account holders the hackers did not get access to payment information.
Among the information that was stolen from Yahoo in this particular hack was email addresses, date of births, passwords, user names, security questions and answers to them. Importantly over one billion user accounts were impacted by the hacking incident which is thought to be separate from the one that occurred in 2014.
Yahoo is also battling a problem with forged cookies created by a hacker who is using them to gain access to accounts without using a password. However, this particular problem is different from the one that impacted one billion accounts and Yahoo has taken steps to make the cookies invalid.
The breach of one billion accounts by hackers is just the latest in a number of security issues that Yahoo has faced this year. Currently the company is in the process of being acquired by Verizon and its value might fall because of the security issues. In September the company has notified the public that data pertaining to 500 million accounts had been stolen.
After the company made the revelation in September, it was learnt that the hack of 500 million user accounts had happened in 2014 and it was known to employees since then. The latest hack however could go down as the largest so far in the history of the Internet.
Yahoo admits to one billion accounts being hacked.
