Yahoo experienced one of the worst blows after one billion user accounts were hacked last August. Following this incidence, InfoArmor which is a cybersecurity firm has reported that the accounts have been on sale for $300,000 on the dark web adding that the sale is still ongoing. The hack in 2014 provided data and an extensive hack in 2013 affecting 500,000 users, the data collected in the extensive hack provided email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, names and scrambled passwords.
Breitbart also issued a report warning that the financial details were compromised by criminal intruders, this is contrary to what Yahoo had said that the bank account information and payment card data happen to be in a separate system that’s different from the one that was compromised.
The number of victims who were affected by the hack is not only restricted to the yahoo.com. However, some companies such as BellSouth, Canada’s Rodgers Telecom, AT&T, British Telecom (BT) and SBC Global also used Yahoo accounts for their customer’s emails. Before Verizon.net acquired AOL in late 2015, their email addresses were serviced by Yahoo. The hack posed threats to many users since hackers can request password reset links to be sent to the user’s inbox. However, it’s fortunate that Yahoo deactivates or deletes inactive accounts that are dormant after one year, this according to their policy.
In statement made by Andrew Komarov the Chief Intelligence Officer of InfoArmor, two renowned spammers and another party are likely involved in espionage tactics had purchased the entire database on the dark web from a hacker group in Eastern European at a rate of about $300,000 or $0.0003 per user. Andrew reported that the transactions were conducted on the dark web since it allows the criminals to anonymously transmit encrypted Internet Traffic on Tor servers in a bid to conceal their identities. Andrew aslo told Bloomberg that of the users hacked, 150,000 were military and US government employees and this could give the hackers a pathway to target the U.S. security systems.
