Yahoo’s Lack Of Cooperation Is Slammed By German Cyber Agency

Former internet giant Yahoo has been criticised by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) for not cooperating with an investigation into last year’s hacking revelations.

In December Yahoo admitted to suffering the biggest data breach in history after more than a billion accounts were compromised during a hack in 2013 and the company’s woes are now continuing after drawing wrath from Germany’s cyber agency.

The US Justice Department  recently indicted two Russian spies for allegedly orchestrating the hack, but it seems Yahoo is less keen to work with the German government on the matter.

Mass breach

BSI said Yahoo’s EMEA unit “refused to give the BSI any information and referred all questions to the Irish Data Protection Commission, without, however, giving it the authority to provide information to the BSI”.

The agency added that, due to Yahoo’s lack of cooperation, it doesn’t have any concrete information about the breaches and decided to go public after multiple failed attempts to contact Yahoo for details.

“Users should therefore be very careful about which services they want to use in the future and to whom they entrust their data,” said BSI President Arne Schoenbohm.

BSI also called for greater cooperation from internet service providers if German customers are ever affected by similar incidents, while Schoenbohm recommended that German users consider switch to another email provider.

Yahoo has so far declined to comment.

The bad news has just kept on coming for the beleaguered internet firm. In February it issued a fresh warning to users about potential malicious activity on accounts between 2015 and 2016, shortly before revealing that hackers have accessed around 32 million accounts using forged cookies over the last two years.

And the fallout has severely impacted its takeover offer from Verizon, with the telecommunications firm shaving $350 million (£280m) off the deal as a direct result of the security revelations.

In January Yahoo announced that it will be renamed to Altaba Inc. after the deal is complete, with a number of directors, including CEO Marissa Mayer, set to step down from the board.

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