Senators Give Yahoo 10 Days To Answer For Massive Breaches

Image courtesy of Yahoo

Verizon’s $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo might still be going forward as planned, but that doesn’t mean the latter company is exempt from answering some tough questions about its massive data breaches: Lawmakers have given Yahoo until Feb. 23 to answer for the company’s actions related to the hacks. 

Senators John Thune (SD) and Jerry Moran (KS) — chairmen of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee — sent a letter [PDF] to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer giving her 10 days to answer questions related to the breach of more than 1.5 billion users’ records.

The senators claim that despite asking Yahoo for details on the breaches several times, the company has not provided answers to “basic” questions.

Additionally, the letter claims that Yahoo “abruptly” cancelled a Jan. 31 Congressional briefing on the matter.

“Protecting consumers has been and will remain the key priority of this Committee,” the senators write. “We have attempted to learn more about these incidents for some time. Our goal is to understand the subsequent steps Yahoo has taken to investigate what occurred, restore and maintain the integrity of its systems, and identify and mitigate potential consumer harm.”

Yahoo announced its first massive breach in September, saying that at least 500 million users had been affected. Cut to mid-Dec. 2016 and Yahoo confirmed that a billion or so users had been affected by a breach that happened in 2013, one that was “likely distinct” from the breach disclosed in September.

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