The 'Exxon Valdez' of Security Breaches

For the second time this year, Yahoo has disclosed a data breach that affected over one billion accounts. Yahoo said that it believes an "unauthorized third party accessed the company's proprietary code to learn how to forge cookies." Yahoo said that "the company has connected some of this activity to the same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the data theft the company previously disclosed." 

They have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with the theft, but the stolen user account information may have included names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.

Jeff Williams, Co-founder and CTO of Contrast Security, was asked to respond to the breaking story and his thoughts were picked up by FOX News in the article "Yahoo hack: The 'Exxon Valdez of security breaches."