Yahoo says hackers breached 1 billion accounts

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO (AA) – Yahoo disclosed Wednesday that it has been the victim of another huge data breach and that 1 billion accounts have been compromised, making it the largest known hack in history.

The devastating news for the company comes less than three months after it announced 500 million users had been hacked in 2014, which was, at the time, the worst hacking ever reported.

In a report on Wednesday, Yahoo said that the larger attack was separate and distinct, meaning as many as 1.5 billion accounts might have been targeted in the two hacks.

Based on research by forensic experts, Yahoo believes the hack of 1 billion users occurred in August of 2013.

Yahoo believes the hackers absconded with the names, email addresses, phone numbers and birthdates of users, as well as partly obscured passwords, security questions and answers to those questions. The tech company does not think credit card data or bank account information was stolen because that data is not stored in the system that was hacked.

“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 pair of attacks could not occur at a worse time for Yahoo, which is preparing to be acquired by wireless carrier Verizon for $4.83 billion, a merger announced in July. Verizon did not demand the terms of the deal be changed after Yahoo revealed the hack of 500 million users in September, but the latest disclosure raises suspicions Verizon might request some alterations.

“As we’ve said all along, we will evaluate the situation as Yahoo continues its investigation,” Verizon spokesman Bob Varettoni said in a statement Wednesday. “We will review the impact of this new development before reaching any final conclusions.”