More than 4,50,000 Yahoo users' email addresses and passwords have been leaked because of a security breach, the company confirmed on Thursday, adding that just a small fraction of the stolen passwords were valid.
Also Read : Yahoo hacked: 4.5 lakh passwords Leaked online
The company said in a statement that an "old file" from the Yahoo Contributor Network was compromised Wednesday. Among the stolen emails and passwords were many from Yahoo's own email service along with those of other companies. The Yahoo Contributor Network is a content-sharing platform.
Yahoo said it is fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure, changing the passwords of affected Yahoo users, and notifying other companies whose users' accounts may have been compromised.
More than 400,000 Yahoo user names and passwords were stolen and published on the Web, putting other websites at risk as well, after hackers exploited a vulnerability in Yahoo's computer systems.
Some logins for Google, AOL and Microsoft services were among those compromised. The three companies said they required affected users to reset passwords for sites including Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, MSN and Live.com.
Yahoo issued a statement apologising for the breach, the latest setback for a company that has lost two chief executives in a year and is struggling to revive stalled revenue growth.
AOL said the Yahoo data published on the Web included valid passwords for 1,699 accounts. Microsoft and Google declined to provide similar numbers.
Other firms whose customers were at risk include Comcast, Verizon Communications and AT&T, Rapid7 researcher Marcus Carey said. He estimated that tens of thousands of accounts of users of services other than Yahoo were affected by the breach.
AT&T and Verizon did not have any immediate comment. Officials with Comcast could not be reached.
AOL Senior Vice President David Temkin said spammers typically use credentials like the ones stolen from Yahoo to break into email accounts and use them to send out spam.
"In this case, I think we actually got ahead of it before the people who stole those accounts were able to use them," Temkin said.
The five most popular passwords in the group were "123456", "password", "welcome" and "ninja", according to an analysis by anti-virus software maker ESET.
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