It all started in 1994, with the appearance of the site "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web". Nowadays it is no longer an ordinary site, but the Internet portal “Yahoo! Directory”, which combines several services, is the second largest search engine. More recently, "Yahoo!" survived a hacker attack.
In early July 2012, a group of hackers calling themselves D33D published on their website the personal data (passwords and logins) of 450,000 users of various servers on the Yahoo! portal. To hack, they used regular SQL code, which is one of the most common ways to hack sites and programs that work with various databases. The researchers, after conducting their analysis, confirmed that this information is not provocative. The posted data really belonged to the users of the servers.
According to data research, it can be said that the vast majority of users used very simple passwords to protect their data. The most popular was 123456. The company apologized to all those who registered and advised them to change their passwords on Yahoo! for security.
An Internet corporation is investigating a compromise on its system. There is evidence that most of the hackers were from Ukraine. The reason for this incident, experts call the outdated backup service "Associated Content", which "Yahoo!" bought in 2010. Ways of eliminating shortcomings are underway.
After this incident, information about hacking of user accounts of other portals, including "Formspring", "Last.fm" and "Linkedin", began to appear on the network more than once.
The D33D hacker group very easily explains the reason for the hacking of such an Internet giant. The point is that they just wanted to show the company that its security system is far from perfect. It has gaps and flaws, even a schoolboy can hack the entire system. The hackers did not get their own benefit, but pursued only a noble mission - to help the company. “We hope that the staff responsible for ensuring the security of the domain will perceive our intervention as a warning sign and not a threat,” reads a post on the D33D Company website.
