Yahoo says hackers stole information from about 500 million users in 2014 in what appears to be the largest publicly disclosed cyber-breach in history.

The breach included swathes of personal information including names and emails as well as “unencrypted security questions and answers”.

It did not include any credit card data, the site said, adding it believed the attack was state-sponsored.

In July, Yahoo was sold to US telecoms giant Verizon for $4.8bn (£3.7bn).

Password change
News of a possible major attack on the technology firm emerged in August when a hacker known as "Peace" was apparently attempting to sell information on 200 million Yahoo accounts.

Yahoo on Thursday confirmed the breach was far bigger than first thought. The data taken includes names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords.

Yahoo recommended all users should change their passwords if they had not done so since 2014.

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"Online intrusions and thefts by state-sponsored actors have become increasingly common across the technology industry," the company said in a statement. Reuters reported three unnamed US intelligence officials as saying they believed the attack was state-sponsored because it was similar to previous hacks linked to Russian intelligence agencies.

Nikki Parker, vice-president at security company Covata, said: "Yahoo is likely to come under intense scrutiny from regulators, the media and public and rightly so. Corporations can't shy away from data breaches and they must hold their hands up and show that they are committed to resolving the problem." She added: "Let's hope the ink is dry on the contract with Verizon."

Verizon told the BBC it had learned of the hack "within the last two days" and said it had "limited information".
The company added: "We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon interests, including consumers, customers, shareholders and related communities.

"Until then, we are not in position to further comment."
The scale of the hack eclipses other recent, major tech breaches - such as MySpace (359 million), Linkedin (159 million) and Adobe (152 million).

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37447016?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central

It's well

some one plz call Lalasticlala.... people needs to know what happening... many peoples perdonal data are at risk

Calm down folks, the breach was 2 years ago the worst is over already. We only need to proceed with more caution henceforth. If you have changed your yahoo password anytime over the last one year, you need not worry. If you haven't, you should now!!! Henceforth, change your passwords regularly (3months interval) and don't use thesame password across platforms i.e same password for facebook, yahoo, gmail etc.

Nice

Saw yahoo message not quite long but I just bone am cos I change my password 6 months ago plus I added phone verification option when logging in from a new device

idolda:
Saw yahoo message not quite long but I just bone am cos I change my password 6 months ago plus I added phone verification option when logging in from a new device

I saw that too