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Apparently someone has hacked a half billion Yahoo e-mail accounts, allowing hackers, perhaps a foreign government, to gain access to these e-mail accounts.
It's not clear if the hack was perpetrated by a foreign government or private hackers. It's possible that Yahoo is claiming that a foreign government was involved in order to mitigate its responsibility (i.e., any foreign government can hack and steal any corporation's most important user information, hopefully a suspect claim at any rate). One suggestion that this was an act by a foreign government is that the hack perhaps took place two years ago, and apparently little private information has been offered for sale on dark websites. A foreign government could have used this time to mine the personal accounts of important individuals and distribute malware throughout the U.S. internet system in order to gain additional intelligence, access to other secure accounts, perhaps even access to process controls, such as for nuclear power plants.
The hackers acquired birth dates and security question answers, making it much easier for an individual in possession of this information to gain access to non-Yahoo user accounts and even to engage in identity theft.
Worse yet, the hack occurred in 2014, and only now, is Yahoo disclosing the hack.
AT&T, and likely other servers, use Yahoo e-mail services, and it's possible (likely) that AT&T e-mail accounts also have been compromised.
It's mind-boggling how such information for a half billion accounts could have been downloaded from Yahoo, and yet Yahoo had no clue about the breach. Doesn't Yahoo monitor downloads from its own servers?
Congress appears to have been incredibly inactive on the cyber security front. While the recent Wells Fargo scandal was disgusting, this hack might be even more damaging, and has elicited little immediate outrage in Congress.
E.g., if someone has access to your e-mail account, it would be simple to send an e-mail containing malware, infect your computer, then delete the e-mail containing the malware, all without the user knowing what had happened. Once the computer if infected, the perpetrator would have access to passwords and personal information, including social security numbers, to all accounts. IF a keystroke logger was installed on an account, the hacker could gain access to everything typed into the computer, such as social security numbers.
If a state engaged in this hack, I would consider this the equivalent of a cyber Pearl War, and even an act of war.
Will there be class action lawsuits that greatly impair Yahoo and even AT&T financial viability?
It's clear that people whose Personal Data has been breached should be notified and Yahoo's security arrangements need to be investigated. If there security was lapse then they should iccurr a fine, in terms of Cyber Attacks Governments work together through Security, Intelligence and Communications organisations, and even military alliances such as NATO have dedicated Cyber Defence Units.
We need to find out what happened and establish the facts before jumping to conclusions regarding Foreign Governments.
As a yahoo account user, I'm quite pissed. This breach happened YEARS ago, and Yahoo kept quiet about it. We're just learning about it now! Not acceptable.
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