Yahoo Japan suspects 22 million user IDs stolen

Unauthorized access attempt of Yahoo! Japan portal may have led to theft of up to 22 million user IDs, Yahoo has revealed.

There has been no information about leaks of such a massive database of user IDs as yet and according to Yahoo, the information that was stolen didn’t have passwords or any other information that would allow unauthorized users to carry out user identity verification. 

Yahoo hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a leak though considering the volume of traffic it noticed flowing from its servers to external entities.

Following the alleged breach, Yahoo has revealed that it has beefed up its security controls to avert any such future attempts. Yahoo is the top most search provider when it comes to Japan with over 50 per cent market share. Google holds 40 per cent market share in comparison.

Japan has already acknowledged that the country lags behind in cyber security plans specifically in the preventative aspects that would otherwise deter such attacks.

Why Yahoo! Japan?

Yahoo! Japan is controlled by Japan’s mobile phone operator SoftBank (35.5%) and  Yahoo! Inc (34.7%), what is interesting is the market share of the portal Yahoo! Japan that holds 50% of the top search engine position in Japan, a figure superior to the Google concurrence at 40%, it’s clear that the corporation represents a privileged target of cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers.

Which information has been stolen exactly?

According first investigation it seems that the exposed information doesn’t include any data that could be used to identify the user’s identity or that could be exploited successively to force password reset.

Yahoo! has immediately started the incident response procedure adopting any countermeasure to prevent further incidents.

On the case is also working the Japan’s national police agency that recently announced the  launch an investigation team specialized in cybercrimes, let’s remind that in the last years the Japan has been hit by a huge quantity of cyber attacks that interested the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sony and Government itself.