On Thursday, the Yahoo Inc., revealed two major data breaches in 2016. The company disclosed that around 32 million user accounts were hacked using forged cookies. The company associates the latest breach to the “same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the 2014 breach” through which almost 500 million accounts were hacked.
In an annual filing, the company said that “Based on the investigation, we believe an unauthorized third party accessed the company’s proprietary code to learn how to forge certain cookies.” The company also has said that these cookies have been invalidated so as to disable their use to access the user accounts. The forged cookies, in general, allow the intruders to access the user accounts without the security password.
In December 2016, Yahoo also released over 1 Billion user accounts were compromised in 2013, which is the biggest breach in the history of the internet. Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer was given a cash bonus for 2016, which was canceled by Yahoo after the reveal of the 2014 security breach, which was founded by an independent company.
Yahoo also revealed that Marissa Mayer has offered to forgo the 2017 annual equity as these breaches occurred during her tenure as the CEO. After finding of the breaches Verizon Communications (VZ.N) which initiated the buying process of Yahoo’s core assets lowered its initial offer by $350 million now making it $4.48 billion, which is a loss to the company.
