The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported Yahoo is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its failure to disclose massive data breaches sooner.
In September of last year, Yahoo revealed that hackers had accessed and stolen personal data from “at least” 500 million users. In December, the internet firm announced that over 1 billion user accounts had been compromised, dating back to August 2013. Hackers stole information including names, passwords, email addresses, birth dates, hashed passwords, security questions & answers, and more.
The SEC is said to be investigating into why Yahoo waited years before disclosing the massive data breach. Employees of the company are said to have bene aware of the data breach since at least 2014. The SEC has requested company documents relating to the hacks, hoping to decide whether or not the Internet company could have disclosed the hacks to investors in a more timely manner.
Senator Mark Warner in September requested that the SEC investigate what the internet firm knew about the breach, and when it learned about it, saying: “Yahoo’s September filing asserting lack of knowledge of security incidents involving its IT systems creates serious concerns about truthfulness in representations to the public.”
Yahoo is in the midst of a planned sale to Verizon. The wireless carrier has reportedly asked for a $1 billion discount off of the selling price in light of the hacks.
(Via MacRumors)
