Yahoo discloses a second major hack that affected over 1 billion accounts

Looks like the late 2014 hack of over 500 million Yahoo user accounts isn’t the only big security issue the company has to deal with. Yahoo just disclosed that more than one billion accounts might have been compromised by a hack of an unauthorized third party back in August 2013. The information stolen from the affected accounts include names, email addresses, birth dates, hashed passwords, encrypted and unencrypted security questions and answers, as well as telephone numbers. The only information believed to not have been accessed by the hackers include clear text passwords, bank account information, and credit/debit card details.

The hack was discovered after law enforcement officials gave the company what looked like user data from an unknown source. Yahoo hasn’t been able to identify the specific breach yet but says it’s “likely” distinct from the 2014 hack. If you’re affected by this hack, Yahoo will be reaching out to you to help secure your account, including implementing mandatory password changes and invalidating unencrypted security questions and answers. Now, is probably the best time for you to change those passwords and use two-factor authentication when you can—not just with your Yahoo accounts but also double up on your other online accounts.

Source: MacRumors

Yahoo Answers Now officially comes to mobile

Yahoo takes out of beta its question & answer app and officially launches it on both Android and iOS. First called Yahoo Hive, the experimental app is now officially called Yahoo Answers. And it lets you share your wisdom on random, obscure things and anything else under the sun. This Q&A format has been a popular feature of Yahoo’s platform ahead of this standalone app. Having actual people answer questions results in weird and unusual responses, which could make for a funny way to pass time—or even act as a starting point for researching a topic that matters to you.

The new app has features like support for rich media such as images and links, being able to ask questions to qualified responders, follow other users in a Twitter-esque format, send thanks through “thank you” and emoji buttons, and receive notifications.

Source: TechCrunch

Yahoo Mail disables auto-forwarding, hinders users from leaving service

It hasn’t been an easy past few months from Yahoo, from being reported that the US government used Yahoo to surveil user emails for intelligence information to a massive hack that compromised at least half a billion Yahoo accounts (also considered the biggest data breach yet). But it seems Yahoo wants to keep a hold of its users for a bit. Those who are trying to enable automatic email forwarding on Yahoo Mail can’t seem to do so now (if you’ve had it on before, it should still work). This feature will let you move to rival services.

According to a Yahoo spokesperson, they are trying to get the feature back up as soon as possible. "The feature was temporary disabled as part of previously planned maintenance to improve its functionality between a user's various accounts." But users who want out, aren’t buying it. "This is all extremely suspicious timing," Jason Danner, from Auckland, New Zealand, told the AP. It makes sense that Yahoo wants to keep users as they are still in the middle of closing a deal to sell itself to Verizon.

Yahoo finally confirms 2014 breach that affected over 500 million users

The Yahoo breach first broke in August when a hacker called Peace was promising to sell 200 million usernames, passwords, birthdates, and email addresses for less than US$2,000. Yahoo wouldn’t confirm the legitimacy of the attack but now we finally get confirmation that the company was victim of a “state-sponsored” attack back in 2014. Yahoo elaborated on a statement on its investor relations site the types of data the hackers might have had access to. "The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers," the statement reads. This doesn’t include sensitive payment information but the hack is considered large enough that Yahoo is working with law enforcement to see what happens.

There is no word yet if there will be a government investigation brought about by this incident. Yahoo hasn’t also said why it took so long to publicly confirm the report. It could do with the fact that the beleaguered company is selling itself to Verizon and the news could cause harm to the deal before it officially closes in early 2017.

Source: Engadget