Yahoo´s stolen accounts in August 2013, including details as usernames, hashed passwords, and many security questions, have already been sold around three times on the dark web for roughly $373,000 each, as it was reported by the security expert and chief intelligence officer at the cybersecurity firm InfoArmor, Andrew Komarov.
The Three Buyers On The Dark Web
According to the International Business Times, he explained that it was a set of Eastern European hackers the one who sold the one billion accounts on the dark web. Apparently, these hackers could have been the same that attacked major websites as Dropbox Myspace and LinkedIn in the last years. Also, he revealed that two of the buyers on the Dark web were spammers, and the third could have been a foreign intelligence agency since they asked specifically a list of 10 American and foreign government officials in order to prove the authenticity before making any kind of business.
In fact, the security expert said he managed to intercept a copy of the database during a purchase, and eventually shared with the U.S. government since it contained sensitive data on many accounts that belong to FBI agents, military officials, National Security Agency operatives and White House staffers.
Verizon Could Get A Cheaper Deal
Apparently, Komarov got to the point of alerting the law enforcements in the U.S. and the U.K. over the possibility of a second breach. A couple of days before, Yahoo admitted that it has suffered another of these attack, but with this one as considered to be the largest data breach to hit a major company.
According to The Sun, this situation might represent a huge benefit to Verizon´s interest in the acquisition of Yahoo, since the company will now have an opportunity to pay less to acquire Yahoo. In fact, many analysts believe that Yahoo could even lose almost $5 million that would gain obtained if this situation never occurred.
