Yahoo hack biggest ever cyber attack

“Hackers stole information from 500 million users in 2014, including swathes of personal information like names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords as well as “unencrypted security questions and answers but did not include any credit card data and suspect the attack was state-sponsored according to Yahoo spokesperson. The FBI has confirmed it is investigating the cyber attack.

 

In July 2016, Yahoo ( Yet Another Hierarchically Organised Oracle) was sold to US telecoms giant Verizon for £3.7bn ($4.8bn).

Back in August a known hacker   “Peace” was apparently attempting to sell information on 200 million Yahoo accounts.

This is the biggest hack which eclipses other recent major tech breaches including My Space (359m), LinkedIn (164 million), Adone 152 million, Badoo (112 million), VK Accounts (93m),Dropbox accounts (68m)Tumblr (65m).

Yahoo in its first decade was a pioneer of internet services, and founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo and the company was worth $125m in 2000. In 2002 Google rejected a $3bn bid from Yahoo. In 2008, Microsoft offered $344.6bn which was rejected by Yahoo. In 2013, Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1bn.

Verizon was hoping use the billions of people who visit a Yahoo-owned site every month to sell targeted advertising. Yahoo’s annual net income dropped form 7.7bn 2014 to a loss of 4.4bn in 2015.