Yesterday, Yahoo confirmed the third major security breach of 2016, notifying its users that they should strengthen their account security measures. We are talking about a security breach that would have been exploited by hackers sponsored by a third country, but those from Yahoo did not provide details regarding its identity.
According to Yahoo, the security breach involved the use of forged cookies to access user accounts of the email service. These cookies would have been forged by hackers using software stolen from Yahoo, so not everyone can do the same thing to compromise user accounts.
The message sent by Yahoo yesterday confirms to users that there is a chance that their accounts have been accessed by hackers. Of course, Yahoo did not specify the number of people who would have been affected by this security breach, but it claims that it is diligently investigating the discovered vulnerabilities.
Yahoo has admitted so far that more than 1 billion of its users have been affected by various security breaches in its own computer systems. The only solution to ensure that your Yahoo account is relatively safe involves using a 2-step authentication system, which involves receiving a code via SMS for logging into accounts on unknown computers.
"Outside forensic experts have been investigating the creation of forged cookies that could have enabled an intruder to access our users' accounts without a password. The investigation has identified user accounts for which we believe forged cookies were taken or used. Yahoo is in the process of notifying all potentially affected account holders."
