The One Click that Brought Down Yahoo
Posted: March 21, 2017 to News.
One click. One and a half billion users. Five hundred million dollars. Those are roughly the numbers involved in sordid story of Yahoo's sale to Verizon. As you probably already know, Verizon has been working on buying Yahoo, but a hacking scandal that compromised a mindblowing number of user accounts allowed Verizon to get a big discount on the purchase. And it all happened because of one click. The FBI recently indicted four people in the massive hack. They've now outlined how the hack happened in the first place, and it all started with a spear phishing campaign. In a spear phishing attack, someone receives an email from what appears to be a trusted source. They'll then open an attachment or click a link in the email, which opens them up to being infected with malware. The FBI hasn't said how many fraudulent emails were sent, but it only took one employee clicking one link to allow Yahoo's attackers into their system. The rest is history. This one mistake cost Yahoo millions of dollars. How much would it cost your business? Make sure your employees are up-to-date in the best cybersecurity practices to help avoid a similar fate.
