“Yahoo is expected to confirm a massive data breach, impacting hundreds of millions of users,” reports Kara Swisher today in Recode: “Yahoo is poised to confirm a massive data breach of its service, according to several sources close to the situation, hacking that has exposed several hundred million user accounts. ... The announcement, which is expected to come this week, also has possible larger implications for the $4.8 billion sale of Yahoo’s core business—which is at the core of this hack—to Verizon.”

— UPDATE: Yahoo has confirmed the massive data breach affecting 500 million accounts. Reported by AP / 22 Sep 2016

— Verizon releases statement this afternoon regarding Yahoo security incident: “Within the last two days, we were notified of Yahoo’s security incident. We understand that Yahoo is conducting an active investigation of this matter, but we other wise have limited information and understanding of the impact. We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon intersets, including consumers, customers, shareholders and related communities. Until then, we are not in position to further comment.”

— Yahoo releases official statement: “A recent investigation by Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has confirmed that a copy of certain user account information was stolen from the company’s network in late 2014 by what it believes is a state-sponsored actor. The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. The ongoing investigation suggests that stolen information did not include unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information; payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system that the investigation has found to be affected. Based on the ongoing investigation, Yahoo believes that information associated with at least 500 million user accounts was stolen and the investigation has found no evidence that the state-sponsored actor is currently in Yahoo’s network. Yahoo is working closely with law enforcement on this matter.”