{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://hurd.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/us-official-blames-russia-yahoo-hack-security-experts-blame-yahoo-s", "U.S. official blames Russia for Yahoo hack, security experts blame Yahoos negligence", "2016-12-15", "2016", "2016-12", "Republican", "House", "TX", "Will Hurd", "H001073", "hurd.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "An unnamed American official is\u00a0pointing to Russian responsibility for the recently revealed hack on Yahoo that exposed data from\u00a0more than 1 billion accounts. The official blamed\u00a0a \u201c\u2018state actor\u2019 believed to be tied to Russia,\u201d\u00a0CBS News\u00a0reported.\u00a0No evidence or further explanation was offered about how the attribution was made.\nThe massive three-year-old breach is being described as a disaster impacting the entire internet.\nThe latest U.S. government finger-pointing toward Moscow comes as the U.S. intelligence community and political establishment\u00a0debate the role Russia and\u00a0its President Vladimir Putin\u00a0played in influencing the 2016 American election with\u00a0cyberattacks. President Barack Obama recently ordered a full intelligence community review of foreign efforts to influence recent presidential elections, a process Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is currently leading.\nComing just months after a separate hack\u00a0exposed\u00a0500 million accounts, the latest news is bringing on a torrent criticism from security experts who are pointing to huge problems in how\u00a0sensitive data including passwords were stored and catastrophic organizational clashes\u00a0that had already has led to high profile departures of Yahoo security executives. Alex Stamos, Yahoo\u2019s former chief information security officer,\u00a0resigned\u00a0after reportedly being being ordered to build a backdoor for the U.S. government.\nLess than a day after the hack was announced, Yahoo is already a target of a class action lawsuit.\n\u201cYahoo failed, and continues to fail, to provide adequate protection of its users\u2019 personal and confidential information,\u2019\u2019 New York consumer Amy Vail said in the complaint filed on Thursday. \u201cYahoo users\u2019 personal and private information has been repeatedly compromised and remains vulnerable.\u2019\u2019\nSecurity experts agree.\n\u201cThey\u2019re not taking security seriously enough,\u201d former Yahoo information security officer Jeremiah Grossman told CyberScoop. \u201cWithout a mandate from executives, they\u2019re not going to make up much ground.\u201d\nBut the future of security at Yahoo is, like everything else at the company, in flux. News of the two big breaches are undercutting a potential sale to Verizon to the tune of a\u00a0potential billion-dollar discount\u00a0on the sale, originally slated for around $6.4 billion. Leadership at Yahoo will likely change but there\u2019s no telling what group will ultimately lead Yahoo.\nWith that kind of uncertainty, any mandate of support from executives could be out the window in a matter of months. Still, Grossman sees potential opportunity for anyone who joins Yahoo\u2019s security team right now.\n\u201cIf you\u2019re at Yahoo right now and you have to do incident response, there are very few things that can benefit you skill wise to that degree,\u201d Grossman said. \u201cHow often do you get the opportunity to investigate a huge breach at a major corporation? It will make recruiting difficult. Not everyone will want to go into a live fire zone but particular individuals can make a huge impact.\u201d\nBut even with the opportunity disaster affords them, security professionals would be stepping into a cratered landscape.\nBreaches happen to everyone, Grossman explained. But cookie forgery \u2014 and with it the ability to impersonate anyone so \u201cthey had the keys to the kingdom\u201d \u2014 went undetected for three years, a product of longterm\u00a0negligence, he said.\nIt\u2019s not clear whether we\u2019ll ever see on-the-record blame by Washington toward Russia for this attack. Even if we do, U.S. intelligence is currently debating how much evidence of recent breaches can be unclassified due to the\u00a0risk posed to human intelligence sources abroad.\n\u201cHaving some of this evidence declassified, I think we need to be really careful because we\u2019re talking about people\u2019s lives. Whatever we decide, whatever we declassify, Russian intelligence will be studying it very closely,\u201d Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said this week.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://hurd.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/us-official-blames-russia-yahoo-hack-security-experts-blame-yahoo-s"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5595611184835434, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}