Yahoo relief: Verizon price cut not so bad, report says
SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo shares rose 2 percent on news that it has reached a tentative deal to be acquired by Verizon that would shave about $250 million from the original price.
CFRA analyst Scott Kessler says a renegotiated deal would come as a relief to Yahoo shareholders and settle speculation that the deal could be delayed again or even scuttled by a series of data breaches that affected several hundred million Yahoo accounts.
“This would be much better than the deal dragging on for months or not getting done at all,” Kessler said. “And the discount of $250 million is notably less than some had feared or even expected.”
Bloomberg News first reported the renegotiated takeover deal. Verizon declined to comment. Yahoo did not have a comment.
Yahoo shares reversed an earlier decline and rose about 1 percent to $45.60. Verizon shares declined slightly to $47.94.
— USA Today
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Updated 2 hours ago
LONDON — Yahoo is warning users of potentially malicious activity on their accounts between 2015 and 2016, the latest development in the internet company's investigation of a mega-breach that exposed 1 billion users' data several years ago.
Yahoo confirmed Wednesday that it was notifying users that their accounts had potentially been compromised but declined to say how many people were affected.
In a statement, Yahoo tied some of the potential compromises to what it has described as the “state-sponsored actor” responsible for the theft of private data from more than 1 billion user accounts in 2013 and 2014. The stolen data included email addresses, birth dates and answers to security questions.
The catastrophic breach raised questions about Yahoo's security and destabilized the company's deal to sell its email service, websites and mobile applications to Verizon Communications.
The malicious activity that was the subject of the user warnings revolved around the use of “forged cookies” — strings of data which are used across the web and can sometimes allow people to access online accounts without re-entering their passwords.
A warning message sent to Yahoo users Wednesday read: “Based on the ongoing investigation, we believe a forged cookie may have been used in 2015 or 2016 to access your account.” Some users posted the ones they received to Twitter.
“Within six people in our lab group, at least one other person has gotten this email,” Joshua Plotkin, a biology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “That's just anecdotal of course, but for two people in a group of six to have gotten it, I imagine it's a considerable amount.”
Plotkin said in a telephone interview that he wasn't concerned because he used his Yahoo email for messages that were “close to spam.” In the message he posted to Twitter, he joked that “hopefully the cookie was forged by a state known for such delicacies.”
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