Yahoo says that information was stolen from more than 1 billion user accounts in a hack that took place three years ago, the second such breach that the company has disclosed since September.
This hack, which occurred in August 2013, is most likely separate from one that took place in 2014 and impacted at least 500 million accounts, according to a securities filing released Wednesday.
The company says names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birthdates, hashed passwords and security questions and answers could have been part of the breach. Credit card and bank account information is not believed to have been compromised.
In addition to working with law enforcement, Yahoo is notifying affected users to help them secure their accounts.
News of a second hack comes as Yahoo continues to pursue the sale of its core internet assets to Verizon for $4.83 billion. A Verizon spokesman tweeted a statement from the company that read: “As we’ve said all along, we will evaluate the situation as Yahoo continues its investigation. We will review the impact of this new development before reaching any final conclusions.”
Verizon has been planning to merge Yahoo, which is run by CEO Marissa Mayer, with AOL. Executive vp Marni Walden and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong are leading that integration. In an interview at Business Insider’s Ignition conference last week, Armstrong said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the Verizon deal would eventually close. “The companies are working well together,” he continued. “There’s been constructive dialogue around things like the data breach that need to get resolved.” He also acknowledged that the Yahoo data breach disclosed in September had “slowed things down a bit.”
