The US financial watchdog SEC has fined Yahoo! $35 million for failing to report one of the world's largest security breaches.
Yahoo! Yahoo! reportedly knew that its entire database of users (billions of usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, passwords and security questions) had been compromised by Russian hackers in December 2014.
Security personnel notified Yahoo! executives (the company’s management and legal department), who decided not to tell anyone.
Two years later, when Verizon announced that it wanted to buy Yahoo!, the company disclosed the massive breach.
“Yahoo! failed to properly investigate the circumstances of the breach and adequately consider whether the breach should have been disclosed to its investors,” said Steven Peikin, the director of the authorities investigating the case, on Tuesday.
The SEC, through Jina Choi, also said: “Yahoo!’s failure to review procedures to assess its disclosure obligations to the “A public company should have controls and procedures in place to properly assess cyber incidents and promptly disclose them to its investors.”
The SEC also found that Yahoo! did not share all information about the breach with its auditors or outside counsel.
Yahoo! neither admitted nor denied anything during the SEC investigation
And something important:
Earlier this month, Yahoo! revamped the look of its Mail service. Anyone interested?
