Yahoo Japan Data Breach: 22M Accounts Exposed

Yahoo breach could have compromised 10% of all Yahoo user credentials. Meanwhile, Syrian Electronic Army targets The Financial Times.

(click image for larger view)
The Syrian Electronic Army: 9 Things We Know
Yahoo disclosed Friday that a breach at Yahoo Japan may have exposed 22 million login names to attackers.
We dont know if the file [containing 22 million user IDs] was leaked or not, but we cant deny the possibility, given the volume of traffic between our server and external terminals, read a statement issued Friday by Yahoo Japan. Yahoo is the countrys most-visited website, and is jointly owned by Yahoo and Japanese network operator
Softbank
.
Yahoo Japan posted a link to a related breach notification on its homepage, and said it was contacting affected users and had strengthened network security in the wake of the attack. Yahoo Japan also recommended all users -- as of last year, the company had about 24 million users -- change their passwords, and added a tool on its homepage that allowed users to check if their ID was at risk from the suspected breach.
[ Defense Department and Google are partnering to tighten cloud user authentication. Read more at
Google, DISA Launch User ID Pilot
. ]
Yahoo Japans users, however, cant change their login IDs -- which sometimes appear publicly; for example, when users post comments on shopping sites -- without losing access to their current accounts email and stored data,
reported

PC Advisor
. But after Yahoo Japan discovered malware on its servers last month that had extracted -- but not exfiltrated -- information relating to 1.27 million of its users, the company added a Secret ID capability, which allows users to use a separate ID only for logging on.
Yahoo officials said they discovered the unauthorized access Thursday. The potential data breach affects 10% of Yahoos user base.
Yahoo was last in the data breach headlines in July 2012, when the company confirmed that an older file containing
450,000 usernames and passwords
associated with its Yahoo Voices service had been leaked online. At the time, it said that only 5% of the leaked passwords were still valid. D33Ds Company took credit for the hack, saying it had been accomplished via SQL injection attack. The group said it had leaked the information as a wake-up call, and not as a threat to Yahoo to fix the vulnerability, the specifics of which the hackers didnt publicly detail.
In other hacking news, the
Financial Times
(FT) Friday became the latest victim of Syrian hackers, after its website and multiple Twitter accounts were compromised via spear-phishing attacks. Syrian Electronic Army Was Here, read 12 posts to various
FT
Twitter feeds. Multiple fake messages were also posted to the newspapers Twitter account.
The Syrian Electronic Army
claimed
to have compromised 17 of the newspapers Twitter accounts as well as its website, and posted what it said was the username and password (Gar1eth) for a marketing executive at the paper.
We have now locked those accounts and are grateful for Twitters help on this, said Robert Shrimsley, the managing editor of FT.com,
reported
the
FT
.
The newspaper is the latest media organization to have seen its Twitter feeds hacked by the
Syrian Electronic Army
, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The group has preciously compromised an Associated Press feed, which it used to issue a
fake alert that explosions had occurred
in the White House. Other targets have included the BBC, the
Guardian
, National Public Radio and
satire site
The Onion
.
Earlier this month, Twitter
warned news and media outlets
to expect further attacks.
To halt Twitter account takeovers, security experts have recommended using a dedicated PC for tweeting, or employing an intermediary social media management such as Hootsuite to block the spear-phishing attacks the group often uses to obtain credentials. Theyve also
called on Twitter
to implement two-factor authentication. But a secret ID service of the Yahoo Japan variety would also help Twitter users, since all Twitter usernames are already public, meaning would-be attackers only need to obtain a password to hack into an account.
As with previous Syrian Electronic Army takeovers, some of its
FT
tweets advanced the groups stated aim [defending] the Syrian nation against the vicious lying media campaign, referring to perceived inaccuracies in reporting on the Syrian civil war. One bogus
FT
tweet, for example, read: Jabhet A-Nosra terrorists executed innocent citizens, referring to the militant jihadist group that currently controls large parts of the rebel-held areas of northern Syria. Some leaders of that group recently
pledged allegiance to al-Queda
.
Interestingly, the
FT
last month
interviewed
a self-described member of the Syrian Electronic Army who calls himself Th3Pr0. All the countries who support the terrorists groups in Syria are targets for us -- their media/government website/social media accounts, Th3Pr0 said. Our demands [are] to stop suspending our accounts and domain names so we can enjoy the Freedom speech of America.
Antivirus systems alone cant fight a growing category of malware whose strength lies in the fact that we have never seen it before. The
How To Detect Zero-Day Malware And Limit Its Impact
report examines the ways in which zero-day malware is being developed and spread, and the strategies and products enterprises can leverage to battle it. (Free registration required.)

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Yahoo Japan Data Breach: 22M Accounts Exposed