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Yahoo Just Said Every Single Account Was Affected by Hacking – 3 Billion in All

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Yahoo on Tuesday said that every single Yahoo account was affected by a data breach that took place in 2013.

In 2016, Yahoo disclosed that more than one billion of about three billion accounts had likely been affected by the hack. In its disclosure Tuesday, the company said all accounts were likely victimized.

Yahoo included the finding in a recent update to its Account Security Update page, saying that it found out about the wider breach through new intelligence obtained during the company’s integration into Verizon Communications. Outside forensic experts assisted in the discovery, the company said. (Read more from “Yahoo Just Said Every Single Account Was Affected by Hacking – 3 Billion in All” HERE)

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Yahoo Secretly Scanned Customer Emails for U.S. Intelligence – Sources

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Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said three former employees and a fourth person apprised of the events.

Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency’s request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.

It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources, who did not want to be identified.

Reuters was unable to determine what data Yahoo may have handed over, if any, and if intelligence officials had approached other email providers besides Yahoo with this kind of request. (Read more from “Yahoo Secretly Scanned Customer Emails for U.S. Intelligence – Sources” HERE)

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NSA Secretly Tapped Google, Yahoo Data Centers Worldwide, New Report Claims

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Photo Credit: Fox News Massive cloud networks from companies like Google and Yahoo cache and serve up much of the data on the Internet — and the NSA has secretly tapped into the unencrypted links behind those company’s enormous servers, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

By tapping into that link, the NSA can collect data at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, the Post reported — including not just foreign citizens and “metadata” but emails, videos and audio from American citizens.

Operation MUSCULAR, a joint program of the NSA and its British equivalent GCHQ, relies on an unnamed telecommunications provider outside of the U.S. to offer secret access to a cable or switch through with Google and Yahoo pass unencrypted traffic between their servers.

The massive servers run by the company are carefully guarded and strictly audited, the companies say; according to Google, buildings housing its servers are guarded around the clock by trained personnel, and secured with heat-sensitive cameras, biometric verification, and more.

Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw a drawing of the NSA’s hack revealed by Edward Snowden; the drawing includes a smiley face next to the point at which the agency apparently was able to tap into the world’s data.

Read more from this story HERE.

Microsoft and Yahoo Voice Alarm Over NSA’s Assault on Internet Encryption

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Photo Credit: EPA

Photo Credit: EPA

Two of the world’s biggest technology companies, Microsoft and Yahoo, expressed deep concern on Friday about widespread attempts by the US and UK intelligence services to circumvent the online security systems that protect the privacy of millions of people online.

Microsoft said it had “significant concerns” about reports that the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, had succeeded in cracking most of the codes that protect the privacy of internet users. Yahoo said it feared “substantial potential for abuse”.

Google said it was not aware of any covert attempts to compromise its systems. However, according to a report in the Washington Post on Saturday, the company said that it had accelerated the encryption of information in its data centres in a bid to prevent snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of other governments.

Documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden and published jointly by the Guardian, the New York Times and the nonprofit news organisation ProPublica on Thursday show that agents at GCHQ have been working to undermine encrypted traffic on the “big four” service providers, named as Hotmail (the Microsoft email service now known as Outlook), Google, Yahoo and Facebook.

Yahoo responded with a strongly worded statement on Friday. “We are unaware of and do not participate in such an effort, and if it exists, it offers substantial potential for abuse. Yahoo zealously defends our users’ privacy and responds to government requests for data only after considering every applicable objection and in accordance with the law,” a spokesman said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Yahoo News Reports Obama Born in Kenya

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

In an article published online Friday, Rachel Rose Hartman of Yahoo! News lamented that President Obama’s upcoming trip to Africa would not include a stop in Kenya, “the country of his birth.” Whoa. What?

The mainstream media for years has been lockstep behind the president in affirming his birth in Hawaii, even derisively labeling those who question the official story as “birthers.”

And in fact, Talking Points Memo reports that within 90 minutes of the story’s publication, Yahoo! News added the following: “Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the president’s birthplace.”

The wording of the story was then changed from referencing Kenya as “the country of his birth” to “his ancestral homeland.”

A screenshot of the original article (emphasis added) can be seen below:
yahookenyabirth
A screenshot of the amended article can also be seen below:
yahookenyabirthcorrection
Read more from this story HERE.

Poll: Internet Edges Networks As Public’s Source For News

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Photo Credit: APBye bye Walter Cronkite, Brian Williams and Scott Pelley. Hello Google, Yahoo and Drudge.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that traditional network news continues to fall as the nation’s source for news. The internet now is a bigger source of news for Americans than network TV, by a point, 25 percent to 24 percent.

Cable TV is still king, with 32 percent of the 1,000 likely voters Rasmussen polled getting their news from that source. Newspapers barely register a 10 percent, and radio is the source of news for 7 percent of the country.

The poll gauged how well the public trusted the media and if they see a bias. On both fronts, it is bad news.

Just 6 percent of the nation considers the national media “very trustworthy,” and nearly half believe reporters are more liberal than they are, said Rasmussen.

Read more from this story HERE.

For New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, it’s God, family and Yahoo

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photo credit: adam tinworth

“The baby’s been easy!” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told an invite-only crowd at a Fortune “Most Powerful Women” event on Tuesday evening in Palo Alto, Calif.

“The baby’s been way easier than everyone made it out to be. I think I’ve been really lucky that way but I had a very easy, healthy pregnancy. He’s been easy. So those have been the two really terrific surprises: the kid has been easier and the job has been fun!” Mayer said, referring to her son, Macallister. The crowd chuckled along with her.

It turns out the former Google executive, known for her planning skills and extensive use of spreadsheets to make major life decisions (and determine the perfect cupcake recipe), can still be surprised when it comes to both motherhood and corporate leadership.

“I think that there’s two surprising things,” Mayer told the audience, comprised mostly of women, “I knew that the job would be hard and I knew that the baby would be fun. And the thing that surprised me, and really puzzlingly so, is that the job is really fun! Yahoo is a really fun place to work.”

In a television exclusive, TODAY aired excerpts of the interview this morning, which may be her last public interview for some time.

See video below:

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Read more from this story HERE.