FBI officials are investigating a recently disclosed cyberattack on Yahoo that occurred in August 2013 and may have impacted more than 1 billion users’ accounts, White House press secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Thursday.
Earnest said he could not address the scope of the material that may have been compromised in the hack because the matter is being investigated by the FBI. Agency officials are unlikely to make the entirety of their findings public since the investigation involves individuals’ personal and private information, he added.
Yahoo’s chief information security officer, Bob Lord, first announced the hack on Wednesday, more than three years after the incident.
“We have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft,” he said in a post to Yahoo’s website. “The stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, passwords and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers,” he added.
Yahoo has already consulted with law enforcement authorities and forensic experts about the breach, but Thursday marked the first time the FBI was said to be involved in investigating the incident.
