Source: NY Times Bits.
SAN FRANCISCO — Another month, another major security breach.
Yahoo confirmed Thursday that about 400,000 user names and passwords to Yahoo and other companies were stolen on Wednesday.
A group of hackers, known as the D33D Company, posted online the user names and passwords for what appeared to be 453,492 accounts belonging to Yahoo, and 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 taken offline: “We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat.”
The breach comes just one month after millions of user passwords for LinkedIn, the online social network for professionals, were exposed by hackers who 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.
Marcus Carey, a researcher at Rapid7, a security company found that among the data were some 106,000 Gmail e-mail addresses, 55,000 Hotmail e-mail addresses and 25,000 AOL e-mail addresses. Those e-mail accounts were not hacked; instead people had used their e-mail address as user names for a Yahoo service.
Sucuri, a company that checks for malware, set up a Web site, labs.sucuri.net/?yahooleak, that lets concerned users check if their account details were compromised in the breach.
Categories: Science, Science and Technology, Technology
Its a good practice to change your password on a regular basis. Please use text strings that are not dictionary word or easily guessed. A combination of upper case, lower case and some numbers should be used. Total length should be more than 8 characters at a minimum..