Dem senator calls for probe over Yahoo hack

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is ripping Yahoo’s delayed response in making public details of a massive security breach public and calling for congressional action on the matter.

{mosads}Yahoo confirmed Thursday that 500 million accounts on its platforms had been hacked.

“If Yahoo knew about the hack as early as August, and failed to coordinate with law enforcement, taking this long to confirm the breach is a blatant betrayal of their users’ trust,” Blumenthal said in a statement released on Thursday night.

“This breach demonstrates the urgent need for Congress to enact data breach and security legislation — only stiffer enforcement and stringent penalties will make sure companies are properly and promptly notifying consumers when their data has been compromised,” the statement read.

Blumenthal also called for law enforcement to investigate Yahoo to see if it “concealed its knowledge of this breach in order to artificially bolster its valuation in its pending acquisition by Verizon.”

Verizon reportedly was not aware of the breach until two days prior to Yahoo’s public release of the information.

According to a statement released by Yahoo, the hack occurred as early as 2014, but a hacker operating under the moniker “Peace” claimed to have hacked at least 200 million Yahoo accounts in 2012.

Yahoo says it believes the hack was state-sponsored.

Earlier on Thursday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) also lambasted Yahoo for being slow to release details on the hack and called for congressional action to “create a uniform data breach notification standard so that consumers are notified in a much more timely manner is long overdue.”