All of Yahoo’s three billion accounts were compromised in a 2013 data theft by unknown hackers in what Reuters calls “the largest breach in history”, the company has admitted.
The tripling of the reported size of the breach - from an earlier estimate of one billion - comes after Yahoo obtained “new intelligence”, the Financial Times reports.
In 2016, Yahoo said that names, email addresses, hashed passwords, birthdays, phone numbers, and, in some cases, “encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers” had been stolen by the hackers. This week, however, the internet giant said the stolen information did not include passwords, credit card data or bank details, The Guardian reports.
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News that the hack compromised all of Yahoo’s accounts “sharply” increases the legal exposure of its new owner, Verizon Communications, says Reuters.
Yahoo already faces more than 40 US court claims related to the data breach.
John Yanchunis, a lawyer representing affected account holders, said the figures were “really mind-numbing when you think about it”.
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