Yahoo is preparing to announce a massive breach involving over 200 million user accounts: Report

Your Yahoo account information and passwords along with that of several hundred million other users might have already been stolen. Tech website Recode reports that a number of sources have confirmed a massive breach of Yahoo’s servers. Recode’s sources tell them that the breach was “widespread and serious”, possibly involving “several hundred million” user accounts. Yahoo is yet to announce the breach, but are expected to do so this week. It’s not clear if the breach will have any implications on the sale of Yahoo’s business to Verizon. Depending on the extent of the breach and the significance of its impact on registered users, the price of Yahoo’s buyout might need to be renegotiated. The breach, which apparently occurred in August, was a result of hacker group “Peace” breaching Yahoo’s servers. The group claims to have access to over 200 million accounts, possibly from 2012. The hacker group has reportedly been selling the data for the price of 3 bitcoins. The data is said to include usernames, date of birth, hashed passwords and other such information. Don’t take heart from the fact that passwords are hashed, however. A hacker who knows what he’s doing can breach the bulk of them in a few hours. As alarming as the thought of your data falling into the wrong hands is, the fact remains that many of us reuse our email and password combinations. Thus, it might not just be your Yahoo account that’s compromised. Motherboard got their hands on a small sample set from the breach and discovered that most of the accounts they tested were either dead or unresponsive. Even if the number of affected users is a fraction of the entire data-set, the affected users could still number in the millions. If you haven’t changed your Yahoo password already, it’s time you did. Don’t forget to change the password on accounts at other places that use the same username/email id/password as well.