Excerpt from USA Today
Written by Mike Snider and Elizabeth Weise
SAN FRANCISCO — Information from at least 500 million Yahoo accounts was stolen from the company in 2014, the company said Thursday, indicating it believes a state-sponsored actor was behind the hack.
The theft may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers, Yahoo said.
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Even in an Internet-dependent population accustomed to the regular occurrence of massive data breaches, the size of this one — thought to be the largest ever in terms of user accounts — is attention-grabbing. And the possibility that another country could be behind the attack adds to the shock factor.