Yahoo Insiders Believe Hackers Could Have Stolen Over 1 Billion Accounts (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: The actual tally of stolen user accounts from the hack Yahoo experienced could be much larger than 500 million, according to a former Yahoo executive familiar with its security practices. The former Yahoo insider says the architecture of Yahoo's back-end systems is organized in such a way that the type of breach that was reported would have exposed a much larger group of user account information. To be sure, Yahoo has said that the breach affected at least 500 million users. But the former Yahoo exec estimated the number of accounts that could have potentially been stolen could be anywhere between 1 billion and 3 billion. According to this executive, all of Yahoo's products use one main user database, or UDB, to authenticate users. So people who log into products such as Yahoo Mail, Finance, or Sports all enter their usernames and passwords, which then goes to this one central place to ensure they are legitimate, allowing them access. That database is huge, the executive said. At the time of the hack in 2014, inside were credentials for roughly 700 million to 1 billion active users accessing Yahoo products every month, along with many other inactive accounts that hadn't been deleted. In late 2013, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said the company had 800 million monthly active users globally. It currently has more than 1 billion.

Comments

All of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Just say they stole all the accounts. It's also simpler to say: "Everyone who's had a yahoo account (and still cares about it) change your passwords now."

Unbelievable

[MightyDrunken]

Unbelievable!

700 million to 1 billion active users accessing Yahoo products every month

Oh and the hacking thing.

Re:British billion?

[plover]

Or perhaps Obillion, or Clitillion?

A "clitillion"? Men would never be able to figure it out.

Re:Fuvking mayer again.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Anyone else pissed off that she can make 100's of millions of dollars just by sucking the right billionaires dick ?

I'm not so much pissed as jealous. I'm a straight guy, but I swear, find me someone who'll pay me 100's of millions of dollars for sucking a cock and you can consider it a done deal.

Re:Amazing Incompetence

[gweihir]

Please do not listen to this person. He is really, really clueless.