“On the same day as a report that says Verizon is renegotiating its offer to buy Yahoo at a $250 million discount, the internet company — for the third time in less than six months — is warning users that there’s potential their email accounts may have been hacked.
Yahoo confirmed today that it was notifying users that their accounts may have been accessed illicitly between 2015 and 2016 but declined to say how many people were affected. However, sources familiar with the matter tell Consumerist that notifications have gone out to a reasonably final list of users and the security investigations are in their final stages.
“Based on the ongoing investigation, we believe a forged cookie may have been used in 2015 or 2016 to access your account,” the company wrote in an email to users today.
Yahoo first mentioned those “forged cookies” by Yahoo in December, when it announced the hack of one billion accounts: The company believes some some bad actors got access to proprietary code in order to forge cookies that let them log into users’ accounts without even having a password, stolen or otherwise.”
Author: Mary Beth Quirk