Yahoo confirms the largest hack in history

As we yesterday reported, inside information had it that Yahoo's alleged hack was real and that the company was only waiting to come forward and confirm it. Now, a day later, the internet giant has indeed confirmed what seems to be the largest hack of this type in the history of the internet.

According to Yahoo the hack that happened in late 2014 managed to collect information from its user accounts. The hacker, which the company believes to be a "state-sponsored actor", stole information from over 500 million users.

Thus far the largest hack has been attributed to MySpace, which affected around 427 million accounts. Yesterday as the numbers were still unclear suggestions of 200 million or hundreds of millions were circulating.

According to Yahoo among the leaked information are:

• Names
• Email addresses
• Telephone numbers
• Dates of birth
• Hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt)
• In some cases encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers

As always with these hacks, you should change your Yahoo password if it has been the same since late 2014. Also change the password on other services that have the same password.

Yahoo has said that it's working with law enforcement to get to the bottom of the hack and will inform the affected users.