Yahoo investigates possible data breach

[Becky]

A hacker has advertised details of over 200 million Yahoo accounts in a marketplace on the dark web, Motherboard reports. The hacker, who goes by the name of 'peace_of_mind', has apparently been selling the data privately, but has now opened the sales up to the public. Yahoo has yet to confirm whether the data is legitimate.

According to a sample of the data, it contains usernames, hashed passwords (created with md5 algorithm), dates of birth, and in some cases back-up email addresses. The data is being sold for 3 bitcoins, or around $1,860, and supposedly contains 200 million records from “2012 most likely,” according to Peace. Until Yahoo confirms a breach, however, or the full dataset is released for verification, it is possible that the data is collated and repackaged from other major data leaks.

Preliminary reports suggest the data is old and possibly obsolete.

Read the full report at Motherboard.