Yahoo examines claims that 200 million email credentials have been compromised

Got a Ymail account? Hacker 'Peace' claims to have 200 million Yahoo logins and passwords

Yahoo, the web portal that was last week sold to US telecoms company Verizon, says that it is investigating claims that a hacker has offered for sale the logins and passwords of 200 million user accounts.

The hacker who claims to be behind the attack goes by the handle 'Peace', and has been involved with several other high-profile data releases. The website Motherboard claims to have been notified of the leak directly from the hacker.

Yahoo confirmed that it is investigating the claims, but it is unclear how current the credentials are or, indeed, whether most of them are obsolete. "We are aware of a claim. We are committed to protecting the security of our users' information and we take any such claim very seriously," claimed the company in a statement.

It continued: "Our security team is working to determine the facts. Yahoo works hard to keep our users safe, and we always encourage our users to create strong passwords, or give up passwords altogether by using Yahoo Account Key, and to use different passwords for different platforms."

James Romer, chief security architect for Europe at security firm SecureAuth, said that the latest leak proves that passwords remain the weak link in online security.

"This year has seen a huge number of compromised user credential breaches from big companies. Last week it was O2. But LinkedIn, Twitter and the National Childbirth Trust all appear on the hit list," he said.

He continued: "It's estimated that around 60 per cent of fraudulent cyber crimes are committed using stolen credentials, and we say time and again that having a simple password and username log-in process is just not enough with the advances in cyber crime and the increasing value of personal data.

"What will it take for businesses to stop this reliance on simple username and password credentials for authentication?

"We already see banks making a move to voice authentication as a way of eradicating the need for security questions and passwords, and it is imperative that more organisations take this lead and look to employ unique identifiers based on user behaviour which cannot be replicated, rather than passwords which we know are so open to fraud."

Brendan Rizzo, technical director for EMEA at HPE Security, said that all users should be on their guard.

"Data has high value to attackers and, even though the information for sale on the black market is several years old, it can still be used for social engineering attacks to attempt to gain access to deeper systems with even more lucrative data that can be monetised directly if stolen," he said.