Yahoo Breach Extends Beyond Yahoo to Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Users
(Thursday, July 12th, 2012)
Yahoo confirmed Thursday that a file containing approximately 400,000 usernames and passwords to Yahoo and other companies was stolen Wednesday. A group of hackers, known as the D33D Company, posted usernames and passwords for what appeared to be 453,492 accounts belonging to Yahoo, but also Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, MSN, SBC Global, Verizon, BellSouth and Live.com users.
The hackers wrote a brief footnote to the data dump, which has since been pulled offline:
The hackers claimed to have stolen the passwords using a hacking technique called an SQL injection, which exploits a software vulnerability.
The breach comes just one month after LinkedIn, the online social network for professionals, had millions of user passwords exposed after hackers breached its systems. The breaches highlight the ease with which hackers are able to infiltrate systems, even at some of the most widely-used and sophisticated technology companies.
Security researchers at Rapid7, a security company, analyzed the dumped account information and found that it included account information not just for Yahoo users but for Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, MSN, SBC Global, Verizon, BellSouth and Live.com users. Marcus Carey, a researcher at Rapid7, found that among the data were some 106,000 Gmail accounts, 55,000 Hotmail accounts and 25,000 AOL accounts.
Yahoo users should also consider changing their passwords to other sites for which they might have used the same password, as hackers tend to test those passwords across multiple sites.
(Source: NY Times)
Emphasis added by SiDi™
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