Yahoo To Start Notifying Users About Suspected State-Sponsored Attacks

Yahoo on Monday announced that it will now notify its users if they suspect that the accounts have been targeted by state-sponsored attacks. With this announcement, Yahoo joins the list of companies that have already taken such measures.

“Yahoo will now notify you if we strongly suspect that your account may have been targeted by a state-sponsored actor”, said Bob Lord, Chief Information Security Officer in a blog post. “We’ll provide these specific notifications so that our users can take appropriate measures to protect their accounts and devices in light of these sophisticated attacks.”

Lord explained that the notifications will provide targeted users specific actions they can take to help ensure that their Yahoo accounts are safe and secure.

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

“Rather, we strongly suspect that you may have been a target of an attack, and want to encourage you to take steps to secure your online presence. In addition, these warnings to our users do not indicate that Yahoo’s internal systems have been compromised in any way”, Lord added.

Companies like Google and Facebook already have warning systems to guard users against government-sponsored attacks. Earlier this month, Twitter also issued a warning to some users about state-sponsored actors targeting their account to obtain information such as email addresses, IP addresses and phone numbers.