Yahoo Joins Facebook To Warn Users of State-Sponsored Hacks

If the user employs similar password over their accounts (a number of studies have discovered that they do), or access job-related portals from home, the hackers can pounce on their their targets via those gateways. “As (a) part of this effort, Yahoo will now notify you if we strongly suspect that your account may have been targeted by a state-sponsored hacker”.

Lord also described in the blog that Yahoo will provide its users with a list of options to secure their account in case of an attack.

However, he clarified that if a user receives such notifications, it does not necessarily mean that the account has been compromised.

Once this is done, the user will be guided through a series of additional steps such as updating phone number or alternate recovery email address, and checking the mail forwarding and reply settings to safeguard the account.

“Yahoo will now notify you if we strongly suspect that your account may have been targeted by a state-sponsored actor”, said Bob Lord. The company isn’t revealing how it detects whether a state-sponsored attack is planned, but does say that notifications are only sent if “we have a high degree of confidence” about the matter. In 2012, Google implemented warnings in the form of pink bars at the top of a user’s screen, and earlier this year, Facebook activated desktop alerts for such occasions.

Yahoo was also quick to point out that any sort of warning does not mean Yahoo has been hacked.

Search engine behemoth Yahoo has just become the most recent big technology company to sad that it will caution hackers based from another country are aiming at their accounts. Attackers attempting to crack Facebook or Yahoo accounts are not after their Christmas photos or holiday messages: They aim at people to accomplish certain goals states Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at the Tokyo-headquartered security company Trend Micro, such as zeroing in on a corporate or government network.

Foreign nation-states accounted for 8 percent of cyberthreats to organizations in 2014, with another 23 percent caused by unknown perpetrators, according to PwC’s 2015 U.S. State of Cybercrime Survey. It declined to share details about how it uncovers state-sponsored attacks “to prevent the actors from learning our detection methods”. Other nation-states believed to be active in cyberattacks include the U.S., Russia, North Korea and Iran.