Piracy solid at Yahoo : 500 million accounts affected – France Inter

The internet group Yahoo announced that a computer attack massive scale, perpetrated at the end of 2014, had reached 500 million accounts in its users.

Sign in front of the company headquarters in Sunnyvale California © Reuters / Robert Galbraith

Yahoo, revealing what appears to be one of the largest computer attacks carried out in the accounts of an american company, did not go by four paths : the giant of the net has bluntly advised its users to change their password. Recommendation, addressed to those who had not done so since 2014, who are also invited to edit security questions and answers.

This time, in this intrusion conducted at the end of 2014, hackers have stolen personal information, names, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers, or passwords. In contrast, according to Yahoo, the banking data of the users would not have been affected. The portal explains that the entity that carried out the attack would be “connected” to a state”, without revealing the identity of the hackers.

The investigation found no evidence that shows that the entity in question is currently present in the computer system of Yahoo (press the direction of the Yahoo group)

But in August, a “hacker” called “Peace” has appeared on various forums on the internet, offering 200 million user names and passwords Yahoo! for $ 1,900 in total. “Peace” is known to have followed the same procedure with the data of the users of Myspace and LinkedIn.

Bad timing for a computer attack

The time to reveal this attack was particularly poorly chosen, so that Yahoo is about to sell, for $ 4.8 billion, its activities in the internet (Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News…) to the telecom operator american Verizon. After the revelation of this massive attack, the price of the transaction could change.

This is not the first time that Yahoo! is the victim of illegal infiltration into its database: in 2012, the pirates had managed to steal the passwords and user names of 453.000 accounts.

beyond Yahoo!, the hacks have multiplied in recent months in the United States, most of them aimed at the computer systems, the internet of large groups such as retailers Home Depot and Target, the first american bank JPMorgan Chase, the health insurer Anthem, or the film studios Sony Pictures Entertainment. In several cases, the perpetrators were suspected to be based in China.

►►►“The rumours were circulating since the month of August”, the story of Loic Pialat :