On Wednesday, Yahoo announced more than 1 billion accounts were hacked.
Whether it be the Russia hacks controversy that is now circling around Washington D.C. Or, the Adult Friend Finder hack that compromised over 400 million accounts. Hacking attacks on major companies are now becoming more and more commonplace.
Last September, Yahoo announced that the company was hacked and hackers stole private information and data from 500 million users. Apparently, the hack took place several years ago and the discovery only happened after an internal investigation following Yahoo users’ private information was reportedly being sold online.
However, on Wednesday, Yahoo announced that the entire situation is a lot worse than they originally expected. Yahoo published an announcement on their website explaining investigators found the company was hacked again affecting one billion users.
Yahoo’s Bob Lord explained, “Based on further analysis of this data by the forensic experts, we believe an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion user accounts.”
Lord added, “We have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft. We believe this incident is likely distinct from the incident we disclosed on September 22, 2016.”
Yahoo announced that personal information such as passwords, user names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and even security questions and answers were hacked. Yahoo advises users to change their passwords in order to protect themselves from identity theft or other hacking attempts. In addition, Yahoo suggests users to review their accounts for suspicious activity and avoid clicking on links from strange emails.
The announcement would make it the largest hack ever. The second largest hack affected Myspace. Myspace was hacked leaving 360 million accounts vulnerable.
This news comes two months after after Verizon announced their plan to buy Yahoo for $4.8 billion. However, after the announcement of the first hack, reports pointed that Verizon wanted to pay $1 billion less in order to by Yahoo. On the other hand, that was after 500 million accounts were breached. Now, that the number has skyrocketed, it remains to be seen if the deal is still in the works.