More than 500 million Yahoo accounts were compromised in 2014 that was believed to be a state-sponsored act.
Yahoo confirmed the figure Thursday saying it was the biggest known cyber breach until now in the world.
The hackers are believed to have taken away names, telephone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth and also the encrypted passwords, added Yahoo.
However, the global tech giant said the unprotected passwords, bank account information and payment card data were not stolen by the cyber thieves giving gesture that valuable data was safe in the attack.
Presently Yahoo is undergoing a difficult time and the information about attack has been highlighted in the wrong time. The attack was in size of more than 3x of other large attacks including hack of eBay in past.
Yahoo was founded in 1994 and in July this year agreed to get acquired by Verizon Communications for $4.83 billion. The attack news may discourage the deal to take place or Verizon may call for a price decrease of $100 million to $200 million. However, the deal still depends on how users leave the platform after the cyber hack news.
Cryptologist Bruce Schneier said the Yahoo attack in 1994 is the biggest data breach until now.
With the announcement Yahoo also urged its users to change passwords even though it was not mandatory.
K&L Gates attorney Steven Caponi said Verizon now gets the opportunity to renegotiate the deal and terms. It can also walk away from the transaction.
Meanwhile, shares of both the companies didn’t decline after the news.