Yahoo's Been Hacked

Nothing is safe on the Internet. In the latest string of security breaches, Yahoo announced Thursday that its mail system was hacked, compromising email account information worldwide. The company says the list of usernames and passwords used to implement the attack was likely taken from a third-party database, not directly from Yahoo. (Well, that should teach people to still have a Yahoo account.)

While it didn't strike the same amount of fear into the hearts of netizens as Gmail's recent brief lapse in service, there are still 273 million Yahoo mail accounts across the globe, including 81 million in the United States. The information sought were email addresses and names from the users' recently sent items. The company didn't detail how many accounts were affected by incident.

To address the issue, Yahoo is resetting the passwords on affected accounts and using second sign-in verification. Users whose information may have been compromised received an email or text notification, and the company is implementing "additional measures to block attacks against Yahoo’s systems," according to an official blog post.

It's not the first time the California-based tech giant has fallen victim to a security breach. In a December disturbance, Yahoo suffered a massive email outage for several days as a result of a hardware problem, prompting CEO Marissa Mayer to apologize for the glitch that hit one percent of its users.

The company says it's working with federal law enforcement officials to "find and prosecute" those responsible for this month's attack. It is also urging its users to change passwords regularly, and to never use the same password on multiple sites. The hack has dangerous potential for further compromising of bank and shopping sites, since many people often utilize the same login information for other services.

The occurrence follows massive security breaches at other major businesses within the past months, including arts and crafts store Michaels, photo-sharing app Snapchat, Neiman Marcus, and Target.