Yahoo hacked: 22million Japanese users under threat

Yahoo said a file of ID details for 22million people was stolen during an attack by hackers, but claimed the file did not contain sufficient details for full-blown identity theft.
Nonetheless, it advised users to change their passwords. In a statement Yahoo! said the attack on its administration system was noticed late on 16 May and that net access was cut off immediately.
The site said that the volume of traffic between the net and its administration system indicated a file of 22 million IDs had been stolen.
Yahoo told AFP "We don't know if the file was leaked or not, but we can't deny the possibility given the volume of traffic between our server and external" terminals.
The information did not include passwords and the kind of data necessary to verify a user's identity or reset passwords, it said, adding that the company had updated its security measures to prevent a repeat of the incident.


Yahoo Japan is 35.5 percent held by Japan's mobile phone operator SoftBank, and 34.7 percent held by US Internet giant Yahoo! Its popular portal Yahoo! Japan holds the top search engine position in Japan with a more than 50 per cent market share, compared with around 40 per cent for rival Google.
Ross Brewer, of security firm LogRhythm, said ““If 22 million user IDs have been stolen, then this has to be considered a pretty wide scale hack. Depressingly though, it’s no longer that unusual to hear of hacks on this grand scale, and Yahoo is just the latest in an increasingly long line of major brands which is learning that it’s no longer a matter of ‘if’ you’re breached, but ‘when’. To its credit, Yahoo has been quick to come clean about this attack.”
In 2011, Sony said information such as usernames, passwords and birth dates of more than 100 million people may have been compromised after hackers struck the PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment services.
Japan acknowledges that its preventative measures against cyberattacks remain underdeveloped, with the national police agency having announced this month it would launch a team to analyse and combat cyberattacks.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said last month that information related to the International Space Station may have been leaked during an unauthorised attempt to access its system.
Source:Telegraph