The string of hackers reaching out to prominent tech giants and hacking into their systems continues. This time, the primary victim has been Yahoo. The company has confirmed that some 400,000 usernames and passwords of Yahoo users were hacked by a hacker group called D33D and were leaked onto the web.

However, Yahoo was not the only one who was targeted. Among other companies whose systems were hacked into, are Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, SBC Global, BellSouth and Verizon.

Interestingly, the hackers who have posted this data online attached a brief note which reads, “We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat.” The online data dump can be found here.

It is alarming to note that such successful hacking ventures are becoming more frequent, making the social media as well as the regular online systems appear very insecure to the users. Hackers seem to be able to hack into any of them on the whim of their wills and put the privacy and identity of millions of users at stake.

If you wish to check out whether or not your Yahoo account was among the ones which were hacked, head straight to this Sucuri Malware Labs page.

If you are a Gmail user, the you are more secure. Because, Google has taken swift measures to immediately reset the passwords of the compromised accounts, thus adding a fair deal of security. Yahoo is also taking similar measures. A spokesperson for Yahoo stated on this account, “We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo users and notifying companies whose user accounts may have been compromised.”

Source: D33D

Courtesy: Mashable