Hack: 500 million Yahoo Account Information Swiped

This article is going to describe the recent disclosure of security breach happened back 2014. Since then what has happened and what Yahoo is going to do as well as what you should do to protect your data.

It’s been only two years, and now it’s been confirmed and it’s bigger than ever, Yahoo is unable to protect something that will not only cause a massive blow to Yahoo’s “trust” but also, now your personal information is in wrong hands. Yahoo on Thursday disclosed a security breach that cost worth of at least a half-billion accounts snatched from right under the nose of them. The hacking took place in the late 2014 and since then there was an ongoing investigation. What was claimed to be 200 million, now as for the recent disclosure, Yahoo believes that the information associated with at least 500 million user accounts. Read Yahoo’s press release here.

The Beginning:

It begins in the August 2014, when a heinous cyber-criminal named as “peace” advertised on a website that he was trading credentials of 200 million Yahoo users from a hack in 2012 and offered to sell them on the Dark Web for just over $1,800.

Since then there is the likelihood of government involvement and legal action linked to the breach, they noted that it is widespread and significant. Conforming to the source, Yahoo said they are inspecting a data rift, and “it’s as bad as that” said one source. “worse really”.

What’s at Stake For You:

Well according to Yahoo, nothing much only your names, email addresses, phone numbers, date of birth, hashed password, encrypted and unencrypted security question and answers too. Yes, nothing much, except, almost everything.

What Did Not Include:

The investigation which is still ongoing has suggested that the swiped information did not include payment card data, unprotected password, bank account information as the payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system.

The Worst Part:

The danger is not going to stop at only Yahoo hack, for those users who use the same password on the website is going to affect more. According to Shuman Ghosemajumdar, Google’s former click-fraud czar and CTO of Shape Security, they have noticed only 0.1 percent to 2 percent success rate from the stolen credentials, implicating that, the cybercriminal using 500 million passwords to attempt to take over account on another website and they would be able to take over tens of thousands of account on most websites.

What Yahoo is Doing to Protect Your Account:

Notifying affected users.
Asking troubled users to change their password and trying to adopt additional means of account verification.
Revoked unencrypted security questions and answers so that they can not be used.
Proposing all users who have not changed the password from 2014, please change it now.
Enhancing system so that it can encounter and forbid unauthorized access to user accounts.
Investigation still continues in this matter.

What Should Your Backup Plan?

Things like these attacks in unexpected and unfortunate and these kinds of debt will keep happening until or unless you have the adequate control on your data. The data are saved in the server of Yahoo, you can only access the data through a webpage. So, what if you could download all of your mailboxes and keep a copy on your local machine and access whenever you want?

If you can imagine it, yes, you can do it. There is tools or software that are developed uniquely only for this kind of objectives. One such great tool is named as Yahoo Backup. The catching point of the tool is described below:

Download all the folders from your mailbox including Drafts and all other customized folders.
Various option to save the emails like: PST, MSG, EML, MBOX etc
Delete the emails after downloading from the server to free up space.
Keep email formatting or metadata like: cc, bcc, sent etc intact.
Option to set backup preferences according to your internet connection.
The downloaded copy can be shared, edited, even printed if required.
Able to see real time backup or downloading progress.
Multiple language supports etc.