Yahoo hacked to have stolen 500 million personal information

Nowadays, it is not strange that some popular companies are attacked by cyber criminals. They are willing to steal personal information of customers, do damage to company activities, and sometimes take a ransom for recovering important data in the companies. Even a hospital can be a target.

My past entry: Ransom-ware and Bitcoin in hospital

Very recently, Yahoo!, a giant internet company, was hacked and got stolen the data it had stored. The data included up to 500 millions of personal information of customers. Thus, the victims can be exposed to the risk of vulnerable security regarding their mail address password, and even credit card information.

Yahoo claims that this case may be conducted by a state-sponsored actor. Thus, a particular country committed a cyber-terror attack, according to the guess of Yahoo. Yahoo has not disclosed the information which state was involved in this case, but some people suspect that Chinese are responsible for this issue.

Vianews.com: Yahoo Hack: Who Got Hit, Where, and How to Protect Yourself

I am unsure who and which organization is the perpetrator. And I would not be surprised who committed the hack. It is the era of cyber war, and it can be caused very easily compared to the real war. Companies have to protect themselves and their customers from not only individual criminals but also hostile organizations.

From this point, Yahoo is not considered to have been prepared adequately to cyber-attacks. Some data including security questions of the customers had not been encrypted. Previously, I had thought Yahoo was inferior to Google and other online service companies regarding technical skills. It is uncertain if my guess was correct, but it is likely that Yahoo has to reconsider its way of ensuring security.

And as a customer, you are recommended to make the change of the password and security question immediately, even if you convince not to be influenced. Two-factor authentication should be considered to be introduced. It is an annoying process but quite effective in shielding your account. Otherwise, you can abandon Yahoo to replace it with other online services.

Independent: Yahoo hack: Am I affected? What to do to protect yourself from the world’s biggest hack

This incident is the biggest cyber security breach case so far. I think, however, it is not so substantially different from other cased happened in the past.