This sort of thing is why we don’t use the cloud. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone does.
Yahoo said a major security breach in 2013 compromised all three billion accounts the company maintained, a three-fold increase over the estimate it disclosed previously.
The revelation, contained in an updated page about the 2013 hack, is the result of new information and the forensic analysis of an unnamed security consultant. Previously, Yahoo officials said about one billion accounts were compromised. With Yahoo maintaining roughly three billion accounts at the time, the 2013 hack would be among the biggest ever reported.
“We recently obtained additional information and, after analyzing it with the assistance of outside forensic experts, we have identified additional user accounts that were affected,” Yahoo officials wrote in the update. “Based on an analysis of the information with the assistance of outside forensic experts, Yahoo has determined that all accounts that existed at the time of the August 2013 theft were likely affected.”
The information taken in the heist may have included users’ names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, passwords scrambled using the weak MD5 cryptographic hashing algorithm, and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. Yahoo said investigators don’t believe the stolen information included passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Yahoo also provided updated figures in a press release and in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
As if there is any chance – any chance at all – that they didn’t know that all of the information had been taken. Who trusts anything these Big Tech companies say anymore anyhow?
Sure, I use Blogger and Gmail, but always in the full knowledge that everything on this blog and in my email could go public one day. There is no such thing as “security” in social media.