Yahoo! stated they were aware of the data and were evaluating it, cautioning users about the situation but did not reset account passwords at that time. Experts believe that Peace is only a broker of the information that hackers obtain and sell through him. Peace stated the data likely dates back to 2012, and security experts believed it may have been parts of other data hacks at that time while some of the sample accounts were still active, they lacked necessary information to fully login properly, reflecting their age. Peace has previously been connected to sales of similar private information data from other hacks including that from the 2012 LinkedIn hack.

The seller, known as 'Peace_of_Mind' or simply 'Peace', stated in confidential interviews with Vice and Wired, that he had the data for some time and had been selling it privately since about late 2015. ĭescription July 2016 discovery Īround July 2016, account names and passwords for about 200 million Yahoo! accounts were presented for sale on the darknet market site, ' TheRealDeal'. The breaches impacted Verizon Communications's July 2016 plans to acquire Yahoo! for about $4.8 billion, which resulted in a decrease of $350 million in the final price on the deal closed in June 2017. Yahoo! has been criticized for their late disclosure of the breaches and their security measures, and is currently facing several lawsuits as well as investigation by members of the United States Congress. Further, Yahoo! reported that the late 2014 breach likely used manufactured web cookies to falsify login credentials, allowing hackers to gain access to any account without a password. Specific details of material taken include names, email addresses, telephone numbers, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers, dates of birth, and hashed passwords. Both breaches are considered the largest discovered in the history of the Internet. Initially believed to have affected over 1 billion user accounts, Yahoo! later affirmed in October 2017 that all 3 billion of its user accounts were impacted. A separate data breach, occurring earlier around August 2013, was reported in December 2016. The first announced breach, reported in September 2016, had occurred sometime in late 2014, and affected over 500 million Yahoo! user accounts. Two major data breaches of user account data to hackers were revealed during the second half of 2016. The Internet service company Yahoo! was subject to the largest data breach on record.

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