Yahoo may be about to confirm a hack affecting 200 million users

Reports are emerging that Yahoo has been the victim of a major data breach, and is expected to confirm as much in an official statement soon.

According to Recode, sources close to the situation claim several hundred million Yahoo user accounts were compromised. The orchestrator of the breach is a hacker named Peace, who put a data dump comprising 200 million Yahoo accounts up for sale in August. At the time that those reports emerged, Yahoo said it was investigating the issue.

Peace had posted the sale on TheRealDeal, asking for three Bitcoins (roughly US $1,800 or Rs 1,20,000), for the usernames, passwords, and personal information of around 200 million Yahoo users.

The breach, if confirmed, could spell bad news for Yahoo, as the internet giant is in the midst of acquisition talks with Verizon’s AOL. Not only could Verizon have new problems on its hands once the US $4.8 bilion sale goes through, it might also badly affect the sale value of Yahoo’s core business, and end up costing the search giant a ton of money in the trade.