The massive 2013 Yahoo breach was three times as big as the company previously said.
Every single Yahoo account, which totals in the 3 billion range, was affected. Yahoo’s new parent company, Verizon, announced the updated number on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017.
The Yahoo hack is far and away the largest data breach in history.
The additional user accounts affected by the 2013 data breach will be notified, according to a statement posted on its website.
According to Yahoo, the stolen info included names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.
Apparently, new intelligence regarding the breach was discovered during the company’s integration into Verizon Communications. Verizon bought the company in June for $4.5 billion.
You can read more information about the original breach disclosure, which took place Dec. 14, 2016, in our previous blog post. Here’s the abbreviated version just to refresh your memory:
- On Dec. 14, 2016, Yahoo Inc. admitted data from more than 1 billion users was hacked in August 2013 in what is the largest breach in history. We now know data from all 3 billion users was stolen.
- The announcement came on the heels of Yahoo’s disclosure in September 2016 that 500 million user accounts had been breached back in 2014 by “state sponsored” actors.
- When Yahoo announced the breach in Dec. 2016, they required all customers to reset their passwords. After the previous breach, the company only recommended a password reset and didn’t require it.
- Yahoo admitted it didn’t even discover the breach until reviewing data provided to the company from law enforcement.
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