Yahoo: All three billion accounts compromised in 2013

Yahoo: All three billion accounts compromised in 2013

Yahoo announced Tuesday that its entire three billion subscriber accounts had been infiltrated in a cyber attack launched in 2013, tripling the initial damage estimate.

This revelation, say lawyers, risks creating difficulties for its owner Verizon Communications. It is possible that the number of common legal actions brought on behalf of shareholders and subscribers increases, they explained.

Yahoo, the victim of the biggest hacking attempt in history, is already the subject of 41 procedures, according to stock documents dating back to May.

Former Internet fame, Yahoo had said in December that it had identified a massive new piracy of its systems affecting more than one billion accounts of its users.

The company said on Tuesday that all the accounts had been affected but added that the stolen information did not concern clear passwords, credit card data or bank accounts.

However, the data was protected by outdated encryption systems and therefore easy to force or circumvent, experts said.

Yahoo added that of the three billion compromised accounts, many were used only briefly, if ever.

Verizon and Yahoo reached an agreement in February to revise down from $ 350 million to a total of $ 4.48 billion (4.25 billion euros), the amount that would pay the first to buy back to the second Internet activities.

Some lawyers are wondering if Verizon will take advantage of the latest events to further lower the price.

The closure of the transaction, announced for the first time in July, has been postponed due to the assessment of the damage caused by the two hacks unveiled by Yahoo last year.

The American telecoms operator, which launches a new brand, Oath, which includes its Internet banners Yahoo, AOL and Huffington Post, has not responded to solicitations on the legal side of the case.

Senator John Thune, chairman of the Senate's Commerce Committee, said he would conduct a hearing this month on massive piracy suffered by Yahoo and Equifax.

Yahoo had already been the subject of an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in this case