Is it time for Telecom/Xtra to ditch Yahoo?

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Yahoo Mail accounts breached, number of affected users not disclosed

By SLAVADOR RODRIGUEZ | 4:31PM PST - Thursday, January 30, 2014


Yahoo announced Thursday that its email service recently fell victim to a cyberattack that resulted
in the compromise of some users' accounts. — Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

YAHOO said its email service recently fell victim to a coordinated cyberattack that resulted in the compromise of an undisclosed number of user accounts.

The Sunnyvale, California, tech company announced the attack Thursday, saying it has taken immediate action to protect users who were affected by the breach by prompting them to reset their passwords.

Yahoo did not say how many users were affected by the attack. Yahoo Mail is the second largest email provider — behind Google's Gmail — with 273 million accounts.

The company said it has found no evidence that Yahoo Mail was hacked into. Rather, the emails and passwords used to access users' accounts were likely obtained from a third-party database that was compromised.

"Our ongoing investigation shows that malicious computer software used the list of usernames and passwords to access Yahoo Mail accounts," Yahoo said in a blog post.

After breaching accounts, hackers tried to obtain the emails and addresses of people whom the compromised users most recently sent messages to, Yahoo said.

Yahoo said it is working with federal law enforcement to find the hackers behind the attack. Additionally, the company said it has beefed up security to protect users from future attacks.

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-yahoo-mail-breach-number-users-not-disclosed-20140130,0,3294421.story

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

A Fairfax NZ news story from a couple of weeks ago....


Bigger issue to Yahoo Xtra email breaches

By RICHARD MEADOWS - Fairfax NZ News | 1:15PM - Monday, 13 January 2014

REPEATED BREACHES of Telecom's Yahoo Xtra email service point to a bigger issue behind the scenes, a computer expert says.

Telecom is still investigating the latest incident, with customers complaining of what appeared to be a third breach of the email network late last week.

Numerous readers reported receiving spam emails from Xtra email addresses which contained links to other websites.

Telecom has been unable to confirm how many accounts were affected, or how and why the breaches keep happening.

One affected customer tracked the email signatures to find the attacks were coming from European ISP Chello, which is frequently used by spammers.

Telecom advised customers who had been affected to change their passwords as soon as possible.

However, that advice has not helped some users who have been hacked multiple times.

A computer industry source, who did not wish to be named, helped some people strengthen their passwords after they were hacked last time.

But at least one has been compromised again — a feat which should be impossible short of a "brute force" attack using a supercomputer over a local connection, the source said.

"I really struggle to believe that individual accounts are being compromised in this manner and suspect a larger issue is occurring behind the scenes," the source said.

He also pointed out the potential for abuse of the breached accounts to go much further than irritating spam messages.

"What if the miscreants turned their attention to actually accessing those cracked Xtra accounts and then abused the massive amount of personal information often left on the mail server?"

That could include the likes of names, addresses, photos, credit card details and personal correspondence.

Telecom says it hopes to have an update on the breach today.

A total of 87,000 email accounts were compromised in an attack in February last year, with a second, smaller breach following in December.

After the first attack, Telecom decided to move customers from a troubled "bespoke" system operated by Yahoo onto Yahoo's main email platform.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/30010456/bigger-issue-to-yahoo-xtra-email-breaches

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from Fairfax NZ....

Xtra customers will have to ‘opt in’ to avoid losing settings and emails

Nearly half a million Kiwis may have to fiddle with their settings on their Xtra accounts.

By TOM PULLAR-STRECKER | 4:58PM - Tuesday, 13 September 2016


Former Yahoo7 chief executive Ian Smith (left) and former Spark chief operating officer
Kevin Kenrick, now TVNZ's boss, portrayed it as a permanent relationship in 2007,
but X and Y have now divorced. — Photograph: John Selkirk/Fairfax NZ.

SPARK is terminating its email partnership with United States company Yahoo and will instead hand over the management of its Xtra email service to a Kiwi provider, SMX.

Its 450,000 Xtra email customers will be able to keep their email addresses, but they will have to “opt-in” to the migration to keep their past emails, email contacts and calendar entries.

Some will also have to change a setting on their computer.

Spark partnered with Yahoo joint venture Yahoo7 nine years ago, promising “good things” happen when “X” (Xtra) meets “Y” (Yahoo).

But the honeymoon was short-lived and the relationship turned cold amid a series of technical problems, culminating in hacks in 2013 that saw tens of thousands of Xtra accounts hijacked and used to send out spam.

Xtra appears to have generated far fewer complaints over the past two years and it is understood Spark and Yahoo7 will continue to have a commercial relationship over advertising on Xtra.

Spark said the migration to SMX's platform would begin in January and was likely to take three months.

Spokeswoman Michelle Baguley said it was a multimillion-dollar investment and one of the benefits for customers was that Xtra emails would then be stored in New Zealand.

Webmail customers would also notice an improved “look and feel” to the service when accessing email via their browser, she said.

Spark needed customers' permission to migrate people's emails to the new service, for legal and security reasons, she said.

It would use radio and digital advertising to make sure it did everything it could to get the need to “opt in” across, Baguley said.

Spark manager Jason Paris said Spark knew email was “a critically important service to our customers” and promised to make the transition as seamless as possible.

“SMX is one of the leading cloud email providers in New Zealand and we are confident in their ability to bring customers' email data back home, safely and securely,” he said.

The nine-year relationship with Yahoo had been positive, he said.

About 11,000 business email customers were moved to SMX last year. The migration next year will be for a much larger number of consumer accounts.

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Related stories:

 • YahooXtra email accounts hacked

 • Xtra users told to change security settings

 • Telecom Xtra email issues unresolved

 • Bigger issue to Yahoo Xtra email breaches

 • No end in sight for Xtra agony

 • Xtra email migrates to Yahoo platform

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/84216309