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  • Geebo 9:52 am on March 16, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , yahoo   

    So what exactly did the Russian hackers get from Yahoo? 

    So what exactly did the Russian hackers get from Yahoo

    As was posted yesterday, the Department of Justice did indict four hackers believed to be involved with the massive data breaches that have plagued Yahoo over the past few years. The alleged hackers have been identified as Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, 29, and Karim Baratov, 22. Dokuchaev and Sushchin are said to be Russian intelligence agents while Belan and Baratov were hired by the aforementioned agents. The only one of the four to be arrested was Baratov since he was living in Canada at the time of his arrest. The other three suspects are currently in Russia which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

    So while the hacks exposed hundreds of millions of Yahoo accounts, only a minority of those accounts turned out to be valuable to the hackers. Among those accounts were those of Russian journalists and cybersecurity experts. Considering Russia’s track record of allegedly targeting and suppressing opposition against the regime this should come as no surprise. Outside of Russia, targets included a Nevada gaming official, a high-ranking executive in a US airline and the CTO of a French transportation company.

    For the average Yahoo Mail user this means that you probably weren’t targeted by the Russians and your Aunt Betty’s recipe for peach cobbler is probably safe, however, it is recommended that you update your password if you haven’t done so in a while or consider moving to a more secure platform that hasn’t been hacked to the tune of 500 million users.

    On the geopolitical scale these hacks could be seen as the start of a new type of cold war where the battlefield is through cyberspace rather than blocs of puppet governments. While the battle may be contained to a confined virtual space that doesn’t make the possible outcomes any less concerning.

     
  • Geebo 9:51 am on March 15, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , yahoo   

    DOJ to charge four in Yahoo hacks 

    DOJ to charge four in Yahoo hacks

    It seems that the Yahoo hacks have been in the news forever. For the past few months we’ve been hearing about hack after hack after hack that exposed hundreds of millions of accounts to the masses. The data breaches were so bad not only did it cause Verizon to ask for a $350 million dollar discount in their purchase of Yahoo, but it also basically cost Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer her job. Now a new chapter in the Yahoo hack saga has developed.

    Bloomberg is reporting that the Department of Justice has discovered the identity of four hackers they believe are at least partly responsible for the Yahoo data breaches. According to sources close to the situation, the DOJ believes one of the hackers to be in Canada and four to be in Russia.

    While the Canadian hacker might be easy to extradite, the problem may be with the three Russian hackers. Despite what you feel about alleged relationships between the current administration and Russia, the DOJ seems to believe that the Russian hackers are state-sponsored. Even if there are friendly relations between the two administrations will Russia be willing to extradite these alleged hackers to the US? That remains to be seen and could be the most interesting chapter in this saga.

     
  • Geebo 9:58 am on March 14, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Thomas McInerney, yahoo   

    Marissa Mayer to step down as Yahoo CEO. New CEO to make twice as much 

    Marissa Mayer to step down as Yahoo CEO. New CEO to make twice as much

    As was expected, it was announced yesterday that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer would be stepping down from her position as Verizon is set to take over the company. Mayer was put in the unenviable position of trying to turn around an already failing company. While she made many bold moves, such as buying popular micro-blogging site Tumblr, fortune did not favor her in this endeavor due to the many security breaches Yahoo had under her watch. As was posted before, Mayer will be receiving a $23 million golden parachute with her departure.

    In the new infrastructure, Mayer will be replaced by Thomas McInerney, the former chief executive of IAC. What’s making headlines about McInerney’s new position is that he’ll be reportedly making twice as much as Mayer did for half the amount of trouble. After the Verizon takeover is complete, McInerney’s responsibilities will more than likely be half that of Mayer since Verizon’s already existing corporate infrastructure will handle the brunt of Yahoo’s previous problems.

    Is this some hyperbolic form of the gender wage gap in America? Is Verizon reinforcing the stereotypical tradition of the old boys network? Only time will tell.

     
  • Geebo 11:31 am on March 2, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , yahoo   

    Yahoo CEO takes massive financial hit over breaches 

    Yahoo CEO takes massive financial hit over breaches

    Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been penalized financially for the massive security breaches that have taken place on her watch. You can read bout some of those breaches from our blog’s archive. In an SEC filing Yahoo said that Mayer did not receive her annual bonus for 2016 because certain senior executives failed to act properly when the breaches were discovered. Mayer’s bonus is said to be around the $2 million mark. Mayer also said that she would forgo any bonus for 2017 as well.

    Mayer has asked that her bonus be distributed to Yahoo employees saying that they were the ones who contributed to Yahoo’s success in 2016. All of this comes in the wake of Verizon’s proposed purchase of Yahoo. Due to the breaches Yahoo’s price has been discounted by $350 million. If Mayer were to be fired by the Yahoo board she would receive a golden parachute of $44 million.

    Yahoo general counsel Ronald Bell did not make out as well as Mayer. He resigned in wake of the breaches and received no financial payout from the struggling company.

     
  • Geebo 11:52 am on February 22, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , yahoo   

    The hits keep coming for Yahoo’s hacked accounts 

    The hits keep coming for Yahoo's hacked accounts

    There is now another chapter in the story of the close to one billion Yahoo user accounts that have been compromised. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Yahoo’s systems may be impossible to integrate with potential financial suitor Verizon because of all the compromised systems that Yahoo has. The report also states that many of the compromised systems and accounts remain compromised to this day.

    Even though Verizon is sticking with Yahoo for the time being, can Yahoo’s brand take any more damage? Can the Yahoo name even be trusted by consumers and can it potentially hurt the Verizon brand if they see the acquisition through? Verizon just garnered some great PR with their new seemingly unlimited wireless plans, but they could lose a lot of that goodwill if Yahoo’s problems bleed into theirs.

     
  • Geebo 10:57 am on February 16, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , yahoo   

    Yahoo reveals that hack was worse than previously thought 

    Yahoo reveals that hack was worse than previously thought

    It seems that getting any kind of vital information out of tech dinosaur Yahoo is like pulling teeth, from a rabid badger. It was made public recently that Yahoo’s infamous hack that compromised 500 million accounts was worse than just stolen passwords. Now Yahoo is revealing that some of the accounts were compromised using a forged cookie.

    A cookie is a piece of code that allows your browser to remember such information as your username for certain sites and in some cases your password. This means that someone with a forged cookie doesn’t even need your password to access your account. Yahoo claims that the hack was carried out by a state actor which means a government sponsored attack.

    This comes at a time where Verizon is still trying to negotiate a price to purchase Yahoo. Verizon just recently requested a $300 million price cut on the pending acquisition. Then again, if it wasn’t for this acquisition we may have never heard about these hacks at all.

    If anyone is still using any Yahoo services that deal with any kind of personal information you may want to think of deleting your account. While any online service can fall victim to a large-scale hack of this nature, Yahoo seems to be inordinately porous when it comes to user security.

     
  • Geebo 11:27 am on December 15, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , yahoo   

    Is there even any point to keep using Yahoo? 

    Is there even any point to keep using Yahoo?

    Here we are again, discussing the Rasputin of the internet. No matter how many times someone tries to kill Yahoo, it’s still here. Once again the former king of the internet has announced that it’s discovered a new hack. Along with the 2014 hack that disclosed over 500 million user accounts, there has been an additional hack that took place in 2013, and exposed more than one billion accounts. That’s right, billion with a b.

    So why are we still using the services of a long dying brand? From most reports, the only services that Yahoo still excels at are stock reports and fantasy football. Yet hundreds of millions of people continue to use Yahoo mail even though they’ve been hacked multiple times. Both Google and Microsoft offer superior products in GMail and Outlook.com and neither service has fallen victim to major hacks like this.

    The reality is that while we see many people talk about privacy on the internet, but for the most part we don’t really care about security and privacy. What we really want is ease of use, which is why so many of us have passwords like ‘password’ and ‘123456’. Not only that, but one could imagine that the majority of Yahoo users are legacy users since Yahoo has been such a huge player on the internet even before Google.

    However Yahoo’s problems are really their own fault. They’ve failed to evolve in an ever-changing tech world with new threats emerging everyday. With security not being a priority for Yahoo they continue to be the butt of many jokes in tech circles. However, user complacency and apathy continues to keep this tech Titanic afloat.

     
  • Geebo 10:01 am on October 12, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , yahoo   

    Yahoo kicking itself while it’s down 

    Yahoo kicking itself while it's down

    It was bad enough when it was revealed that Yahoo had been hacked to the tune of 500 million users, now it turns out there nay have been more. Many AT&T and SBC-Global email accounts were set up through Yahoo servers and many users have been reporting that they’ve been unable to change their passwords.

    Then, in what could be considered a bad PR move, Yahoo has temporarily disabled email forwarding. That means if you were leaving Yahoo and wanted your email forwarded to your new address, you wouldn’t be able to do that now. It can be understood that Yahoo would want to stop hemorrhaging users, but to use technical sleight of hand to prevent them from leaving is questionable at best.

    So it should come as no surprise that with all of Yahoo’s problems, Verizon is asking for a $1 billion discount in the asking price for Yahoo. Can you blame them? It shouldn’t come as a surprise if Verizon even decided to back out of the deal.

    If Yahoo continues to have these kind of controversies it may find itself in the ever-increasing graveyard of tech companies that failed to achieve their full potential.

     
  • Geebo 11:08 am on September 23, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , yahoo   

    Yahoo hacked again. What you need to do 

    Yahoo hacked again. What you need to do

    Yesterday, Yahoo announced that 500 million accounts had been stolen by a state-sponsored hack back in 2014. So if you use Yahoo Mail, or any other of their services like Flickr, it’s time to change your password once again. Even if you’ve changed your password since the hack took place it is recommended that you update your password again. This inevitably brings out the articled and blog posts about how to keep your passwords secure, and this is one of them.

    First, you should try using a passphrase instead of a password. Also you should really consider enabling two-factor authentication for most of your accounts. Some tech experts also suggest using a password manager. Personally, I don’t care for password managers for one reason, they require a master password. That means that all your passwords can have a single point of failure. If you lose your password manager’s password then all your passwords could be lost. Conversely, if someone were to access your password manager’s password they’d have access to all your passwords. However, your results may vary.

    A great resource to see if any of your accounts have been hacked is the “have i been pwned?” website. At their website you can enter your email address to see if any of your accounts associated with your email address have been compromised in the most infamous hacks that have taken place on the internet.

    Lastly, and this one can’t be stressed enough, don’t use the same password for all your accounts. That is how most accounts get hacked. Hackers will get an email address and password from one hack, such as Yahoo’s, and then will try them on other services like Facebook to try to gain even more of your personal information.

     
  • Geebo 9:52 am on July 28, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Tumblr, , yahoo   

    Tumblr tries to straddle a fine line when it comes to ads 

    Tumblr tries to straddle a fine line when it comes to ads

    After being classified as ‘worthless’ in the Yahoo-Verizon deal, micro-blogging site Tumblr will be rolling out ads on its users’ blogs today. The problem is that Tumblr has the unenviable task of trying to be profitable without alienating their core user base.

    Tumblr’s main demographic tends to skew much younger than most comparable services like Twitter or Facebook. Due to their users’ naiveté, Tumblr’s users tend to not only be resistant to change but they tend to resent any kind of corporate influence into what they perceive as a fragile ecosystem. When Yahoo first purchased Tumblr in 2013, many of its users took to their keyboards to voice their displeasure (NSFW language), to say the least.

    What their young minds may not understand is that not a lot of people run a free service on the internet purely out of the goodness of their hearts, and in no uncertain terms, advertising is the currency of the internet. Tumblr needs to make money in order for it to survive and Tumblr users are already raging against the advertising machine. If Tumblr continues to be valued as basically worthless, then new parent company Verizon, may decide to shutter Tumblr altogether. If Tumblr’s users want to keep their favorite platform, then it might be time for their user base to do some growing up.

     
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