This is one of the largest data thefts in history. Yahoo! confirmed on Thursday evening that the data of more than 500 million accounts had been stolen by hackers, “an entity probably related to a State”. Europe 1 is the point on the place, and the consequences of this attack.
Why this hacking is it so important ? The attack suffered by Yahoo! is historic in its scope. While the service claimed a billion accounts in 2012, the data of 500 million of them have been stolen by hackers “at the end of 2014″. Previous flights have already hit services to the internet in the past, but their scale was much smaller. In 2013, it is MySpace which had been faced with the piracy of 417 million accounts. Prior to this, the data of 117 million LinkedIn accounts were stolen in 2012.
What do we know about the place from piracy ? Yahoo! remains very vague on the precise timing of this piracy. The company merely indicates that it occurred “late 2014″. However, his confirmation has been held that Thursday night, Yahoo! having detected the data theft that recently. It is the publication on the Internet, in the month of August, a message by a hacker named “Peace”, which launched the investigation. The latter announced, in effect, to sell them on the dark net a file containing data dating back to 2012, and about 200 million accounts. Thanks to these investigations, the hacking of the 500 million accounts has been discovered.
Who committed this piracy ? The answer is unknown at the present time. Yahoo! explained simply that it was made by “an entity probably related to a State”. An investigation is now launched by the FBI to try to determine the precise origin of the piracy. A spokesman for the company, however, has indicated to Forbes that the data theft had no connection with the sale of data by the hacker “Peace” this summer.
What data have been stolen ? The hackers have had access to the personal data of the affected accounts. Among the information they were able to retrieve are name, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth, the equivalent of the data contained in a file marketing. Passwords have also been compromised. Even if Yahoo! ensures that the majority of them were encrypted and therefore difficult to use, the press release suggests that a part of them were readable. Finally, the hackers have also accessed the “security questions”, these questions required to change his or her password, some of which were not encrypted.
How to know if your account is concerned ? All affected users have received an email from a Yahoo! with the subject line : “Important Message Regarding Your Account Security,” in explaining the prevalence of piracy, the measures taken by the company and, most importantly, the procedure to follow to change his / her password. Beware though, some clever one might be tempted to usurp the mail official Yahoo!. It is better to check the address of the sender to ensure that it is the american company.
What to do in case of piracy ? The advice may seem obvious, but it is imperative to change the password. Especially, if you use the password of your Yahoo! on other services, it is necessary to change them also. With your e-mail address and the recovered password, hackers could attempt to connect to other services. Finally, during the password change, make sure you do not put the same password on two different services. If you are afraid not to remember software password managers – Dashlane and 1Password – exist.
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