Yahoo detects hacking attempt of users’ email accounts

Internet giant Yahoo said that it has detected an attempt to break into its customers’ email accounts. The US-based internet email provider informed that usernames and passwords for accounts have probably been collected from a database which was owned by a compromised third party.

With this in mind, Yahoo has decided to reset all passwords on affected accounts and has added an extra verification step for users when they sign in. The company assured that it was cooperating with law enforcement in order to find out who was responsible for the attack. It has not been disclosed how many Yahoo email accounts have been affected by the latest attack.

Yahoo’s statement on its Tumbler page said, “Our ongoing investigation shows that malicious computer software used the list of usernames and passwords to access Yahoo Mail accounts”. The statement was written by the senior vice president of the company, Jay Rossiter, who went on to say that the information sought in the attack appears to be names and email addresses from the affected accounts’ latest emails.

Yahoo did not reveal any date of the attempted hack, but the company said that there was no evidence that usernames and passwords have been obtained directly from the systems of Yahoo.