Yahoo suffers world's biggest hack, 1 billion users affected

Los Angeles : Yahoo had a very bad day on Wednesday when more than 1 billion accounts were exposed after a third-party hacker hit the internet company. Notably, this is the second attack which has hit the company, last one being revealed in September. Where 500 million accounts were hacked.

This time the hack earned a dubious new honour for the company after 1 billion accounts were hacked.

The company’s statement read: "Yahoo believes an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion user accounts. The company has not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft. Yahoo believes this incident is likely distinct from the incident the company disclosed on September 22, 2016. The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system the company believes was affected"

The new data breach reveals names, telephone numbers, email addresses, hashed passwords and, in some instances, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.

According to the company's chief information security officer, Bob Lord, "As we previously disclosed in November, law enforcement provided us with data files that a third party claimed was Yahoo user data. We analyzed this data with the assistance of outside forensic experts and found that it appears to be Yahoo user data."

 Yahoo is still investigating the breach, however the one occurred in August 2013 is still pending.