Yahoo suffers another ‘hacking’; more than 1000 million users affected – CNET in Spanish

The chief executive of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer.

Photo by Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

Yahoo said on Wednesday it was discovered that he was the victim of another cyber attack, and this time it affected more than 1,000 million user accounts. This figure represents double the number of people affected by the hacking that was revealed in September.

The stolen data included user names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords. Passwords are encrypted with a tool called MD5, which, according to experts, can be deciphered with a little patience. The data also include certain security questions and answers, which were not encrypted.

“Yahoo is notifying all the users potentially affected has taken steps to secure their accounts, such as requiring users to change their passwords,” said the company in a press release. “Yahoo has invalidated the security questions and answers that are not encrypted to ensure that they are not used to access an account.”

This cyber-attack occurred in August 2013.

This hacking represents another blow for the chief executive of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, who joined the company in 2012 with great fanfare. The former executive of Google had as a mission to change the course of Yahoo, and tried to push the struggling company into the age of smart phones. Mayer has refreshed all the apps, mobile of Yahoo and made large bets on the mobile industry, but the company was not able to generate money from these projects.

This announcement of a new hack is added to the list of problems and challenges that has faced the company in recent months. Let, in addition, another brand in a beaten up company that seeks to complete its acquisition by Verizon. When Yahoo announced another cyber attack in September, in which the hackers used the data of users of about 500 million accounts, she was considered the cyber attack, largest in history.

Two weeks after that announcement, the company faced more criticism after that came a report that pointed out that Yahoo has created tools to monitor the emails of their clients to the authorities of the intelligence agencies of the united States.

Meanwhile, Yahoo has been waiting to see what holds his future as a part of Verizon, which agreed to buy the company for US$ 4,800 million in July. It is expected to finalize and formalize the purchase in the first quarter of 2017, but the revelations of the cyber attack in July sowed doubt among the executives of Verizon on the feasibility of your acquisition.

it is Not clear if the announcement of the attack made on Wednesday will affect the treatment. Verizon did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Sumit Argawal, co-founder and vicepresidnete of product management in the enterprise of cyber-security Shape Security, said that cyber attacks that has become known Yahoo fit a pattern of the companies whose security is not protected. Often, he said, the companies and organisations begin describing their cybersecurity problems in terms of smaller scale and are adding more attacks to the list.

“When the entities have a mediocre security status, inevitably end up losing the keys to your kingdom,” said Argawal.