The shine has come off of Verizon's proposed deal to purchase Yahoo's core Internet assets after this week's news that the latter suffered its second major email hack.
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) is looking at Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) to lower the price of the $4.83 billion acquisition, or go to court to get out of the deal entirely, according to Reuters.
On Wednesday, Yahoo announced that it had uncovered a 2013 cyber attack that compromised the user data of more than 1 billion email accounts. According to Bloomberg, the hack included more than 150,000 US government employees.
Wednesday's data breach news came on the heels of an announcement by Yahoo in September that more than 500 million accounts had been hacked. In an email to the affected users from the 2013 breach, Yahoo said it thought the second announced breach was separate from September's.
"The stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers," Yahoo's email said.
Verizon is seeking to protect itself from any potential litigation related to the 2013 breach, according to Bloomberg. Verizon announced its deal with Yahoo back in July. (See Verizon Betting Big on Yahoo's Assets.)
— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation