The Sunnyvale, California, company said its investigation so far hasn't found any evidence that information about users' bank accounts or credit and debit cards were swiped in the hacking attack. Last month, the tech site Motherboard reported that a hacker who uses the name "Peace" boasted that he had account information belonging to 200 million Yahoo users and was trying to sell the data on the web. “This account has been disabled or discontinued,” read one autoresponse to many of the emails that failed to deliver properly, while others read “This user doesn’t have a yahoo.com account.” Representatives of Verizon and Yahoo started meeting recently to review the Yahoo business, so that the acquisition would run smoothly once complete. But there’s nothing smooth about this hack, said sources, which became known in August when an infamous cybercriminal named “Peace” claimed on a website that he was selling credentials of 200 million Yahoo users from 2012 on the dark web for just over $1,800. The stolen data includes users' names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, hashed passwords, and the security questions — and answers — used to verify an accountholder's identity. At the time, Yahoo said it was “aware of the claim,” but the company declined to say if it was legitimate and said that it was investigating the information. Yahoo works hard to keep our users safe, and we always encourage our users to create strong passwords, or give up passwords altogether by using Yahoo Account Key, and use different passwords for different platforms.” 
 
 A screenshot of the listing for the sale of the alleged hacked Yahoo data.
– Yahoo is confirming what Recode describes as a "widespread and serious" data breach affecting 500 million users. Yahoo blames "state-sponsored actors" for the personal data that was stolen in 2014 but only recently discovered to have been stolen, the AP reports. Yahoo had previously been expected to confirm an estimated 200 million users were affected. Motherboard spoke in August to a hacker known as "Peace” who claimed to be hawking data from 200 million Yahoo accounts on the dark web, per Business Insider. The hacker said the data—which includes usernames, passwords, security questions and answers, birth dates, phone numbers, and email addresses—was likely stolen in 2012. No such breach was ever made public. However, Yahoo said at the time that it was "aware of the claim" and was investigating. Confirmation of such a breach—which Hacked.com says could be "the largest data breach on record"—could now affect Yahoo's $4.8 billion sale to Verizon. Not only is it a pain for Verizon, but Yahoo shareholders will be concerned about a possible drop in the company's sale price. The sources tell Recode that government investigations and legal action in regards to breach are expected. In its confirmation of the breach, Yahoo suggested users change their passwords, assuming they haven't already done so since 2014.