Yahoo confirms stole data from 500m accounts by hackers attack

Yahoo confirmed that personal data from at least 500 million of its user accounts has been stolen in one of history's largest ever security breaches. The company, in the statement, said that "state-sponsored actor" is behind the attack, which happened in late 2014, but was only discovered recently during investigation of another suspected attack. Yahoo didn't revealed the identity of the state.

“The ongoing investigation suggests that stolen information did not include unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information; payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system that the investigation has found to be affected,” said the company in the statement.
Yahoo is recommending all users should change their passwords if they have not done so since 2014.

The Yahoo hack records the largest single-site security breach in history, according Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a US-based non-profit organisation that tracks data breaches and other privacy issues.

The revelation comes at a bad time for Yahoo, when the company led by Marissa Meyer is reportedly in the latter stages of being sold to another US-based tech giant, Verizon, for $4.8 billion.

After the breach was revealed, Verizon released a statement saying that it found out about the security breach "within the last two days."

"We understand that Yahoo is conducting an active investigation of this matter, but we otherwise have limited information and understanding of the impact," the company said in a statement to ABC News. "We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon interests, including consumers, customers, shareholders and related communities. Until then, we are not in position to further comment."