Yahoo hackers, motives, implications, strategies used and main actors

In a report, we’ll discuss the Yahoo hacking incident in detail, outlining the perpetrators’ goals, motivations, tactics, and tools. Yahoo has experienced two significant data thefts.Nearly 500 people were reportedly impacted by the first hacking incident in 2014, and over one billion accounts were compromised in the most recent incident in 2016. The aforementioned instances detail the greatest number of breaches since the internet’s inception. (Nicole, 2016).

The initials of the account holders, including names, phone numbers, emails, and encrypted passwords, were what the hackers were primarily interested in acquiring. The account hackers aimed at obtaining information on the Russian journalists, United States Government, employees especially in the private sector and other organisations. According to the available research carried out by yahoo, individuals with support usually do the hacking activities from certain states where countries like china, South Korea and Russia are being linked to be behind the recent hacking (Nicole, 2016).

The United States department of justice believes that the hacking was conducted by two Russian spy officials or agents by the names of Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin who hired cyber criminals to help them in the executing of the hacking however, the alignment is being denied by top Russian officials. According to the Russian press secretary, the Federal security service has no connections with the hacking therefore the issue still remains on a serious debate since some of the available information is being based on speculation but not evidence (Patrick, 2016).

According to information obtained from court proceedings, the hackers infiltrated the yahoo’s defences and obtained its user database that had all the relevant data like usernames, phone numbers among others. The database had information that can be useful while concocting or forging files to be used while monitors and tracking user’s .Through playing around with the cookies, it was easy for the hackers to trick the yahoo devices like computer to login the targeted accounts. They also used an account management tool that could enable them to look for email addresses that have been backed up by users. Through these methods and tools, over 6500 accounts were accessed by them and the available information suggests one bellan after successfully forging cookies, he was able to obtain data on over 30 million people. In his operation, the FSB of Russia provided him safety through availing him with the necessary intelligence (Patrick, 2016).

According to Yahoo, the hacking was a result of lack of proper communication and coordination, coupled with poor management inquiry and internal reporting. The hacked information was a very big threat to privacy, national security as it could easily be used to establish phishing infiltrations to account users that could result into accessing vital, and private information that is capable of being used for hidden and malicious a genders.

Conclusively, the yahoo hacking is a complex issue that has affected most internet users in various professionals. Recent information from court and other investigations indicate that Russia played a primary role towards the current breaches through its FSB agency but Russia had a firm standpoint on the issue rejecting each allegation as just efforts of the united states of America to her image internationally. Therefore, it can be concluded that the yahoo hacking was a well crime with various actors that had their own selfish a gender

References

Perlroth, Nicole, (2016). “Yahoo Says Hackers Stole Data on 500 Million Users in 2014”. The New York Times.

May, Patrick, (2016). “How a super cyber-sleuth helped crack the huge Yahoo hack”. sMercury News.