Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Apologizes For Data Breach, Blames Russians (reuters.com)

Former Yahoo chief executive officer Marissa Mayer apologized today for a pair of massive data breaches at Yahoo and blamed Russian agents on the growing number of incidents involving major U.S. companies. A reader shares a report: "As CEO, these thefts occurred during my tenure, and I want to sincerely apologize to each and every one of our users," she told the Senate Commerce Committee, testifying alongside the interim and former CEOs of Equifax and a senior Verizon Communications executive. "Unfortunately, while all our measures helped Yahoo successfully defend against the barrage of attacks by both private and state-sponsored hackers, Russian agents intruded on our systems and stole our users' data."

Comments

My product sucks so

[OffTheLip]

blame Russia. I sense a pattern here.

It's becomming a fad these days ....

[Jerry]

losers blaming Russians for their own incompetency.

RUSSIA

[amiga3D]

It's always a good idea to blame other's for your incompetence. If it wasn't the RUSSIANS it'd be the CHINESE or the INDIANS or some other nation. Cyberspace is like the wild west. Strap on a six shooter and defend yourself.

Re:RUSSIA

[bluefoxlucid]

That's the thing: as a project manager, I look at things we would do differently next time. Factors outside our control are explanations, but not excuses.

It's kind of annoying that, as a Democrat aligned with the Democratic party philosophies, I have to keep pointing out that Hillary wrote a whole god damned book about why she lost the 2016 election--and blamed everyone else. H.R. McMaster had written a book called "Derelection of Duty" for which he was criticized in reviews because he didn't address the superior strategy and military power of the Vietcong; yet he did exactly what he should have done: he addressed everything the American administration did wrong, because we can't expect the Vietcong to play along nicely in the war.

Yes, the Russians are coming to hack you. Yes, that's going to cause an uptick in incidents, regardless of what you do. Now harden up and figure out how you're going to keep this shit to a minimum, because that's your job, and it's the only thing you have control over.

Back in 1984

[cloud.pt]

I love how every single US problem these days is insta-mitigated with "blame the russians".

Re:Canada

[Mashiki]

It was replaced. First by 4chan, then gamergate, and now Russia. Blaming someone else is the typical cop-out by people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions(or in-action).

Hey Marissa

[93 Escort Wagon]

If you really felt you were at fault, you'd give all those millions of dollars back.

But it's quite obvious what's she's saying is "sorry not sorry" - "I was CEO, so of course the buck stopped with me... but I wasn't actually culpable in any way".

Re:Should have colluded with Russia like Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be better if Yahoo just colluded with Russia's attack on its users like Trump colludes with Russia's attacks on America while denying that Russia is responsible for the crimes that he colludes with?

You obviously missed the fact that the Russian lawyer supposedly colluding with Trump met with the same group Hillary! hired to create that fake Trump dossier.

Yep, that same Russian lawyer met with Fusion GPS right before and right after Don Jr. said, "WTF?!?!" to her when she tried to entrap him.

Who's colluding with Russia?

"Follow the money"

Democrats paid Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS created that fake Trump dossier. Fusion GPS met with the Russian lawyer who tried to meet with Trump.

Why spend money on security..

[sqorbit]

...when it's way easier just to blame Russia. Lots of American's will jump on board with this. Russian hacking is the bad guy, we're the good guys. Now we can all just ignore that fact that US corporations are constantly targets because of horrible security policies and crappy management.

Re:Burglary is illegal even if the door is unlocke

[NicknameUnavailable]

A) It's the internet, a system known to have innumerable malicious actors who will fuck up your shit just for the sport of it, even if it's not valuable. If you plug something into it you assume the risk and in turn the burden of securing it

B) This is Marissa Mayer we're talking about, the woman who sank Yahoo! after getting the job running it purely on the basis of social justice and as a gimmick to attract the SJW crowd to the already-dying platform. No amount of external bad actors had anything to do with that, it would have sank just as readily without them (and probably without her, for that matter.)

Yahoo! is the product of the dot-com bubble when everyone and their mother was throwing money at tech, especially search engines. They failed to monopolize the market while someone else didn't so they sucked and died. The underlying cause is that we exist in an economy which strongly favors monopolies, and for something like a search engine with huge data and computational requirements that certainly applies no less. Moreover, Yahoo! was the ADHD-riddled company in the search engine business, they tried social networking, search, image sharing, video sharing, instant messaging, chat, eCommerce, etc and they every single one badly - even managing their already-successful-but-doomed-by-association acquisitions. Hell, they even partnered with Microsoft's Bing and handed over their one asset - the data they acquired over the years - to remain relevant for a couple of more years. Yahoo! is the example of everything not to do as a company and at least half their board (that I know of) were actually smoking meth on a daily basis.

Nice try Marissa

[erp_consultant]

The dog ate my homework. Let's just blame everything on "the Russians". Well, that narrows it down to a few hundred million people. Let's not bother to actually try and find out which "Russian" may have perpetrated this act. No let's just leave it at that and call it a day. Great way to deflect attention from the fact that this massive breech occurred ON YOUR WATCH.

Well, at least you managed to get all those people working from home back into the office. Because if they are working from home they can't possibly keep an eye on those pesky "Russians". Except that..oh...it happened anyway. So I guess that one kinda backfired. At least you can point to your tremendous success in every portfolio you touched during your tenure as CEO...crickets....

She did "sincerely apologize" so I guess that counts for something. Except she did it after making away with hundreds of millions of dollars in salary and stock so it rings exceedingly hollow to me. And laying off thousands of workers. And driving a stake through the heart of a once proud internet pioneer. But hey, Marissa took care of Marissa and that's all that really matters. Right?

Cunt. Karma is going to have a field day when it catches up to you.