[BreachExchange] Defending Against Hackers Took a Back Seat at Yahoo, Insiders Say

[Inga Goddijn]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/technology/yahoo-data-breach-hacking.html?_r=0&mtrref=feedly.com

Six years ago, Yahoo’s computer systems and customer email accounts were
penetrated by Chinese military hackers. Google and a number of other
technology companies were also hit.

The Google co-founder Sergey Brin regarded the attack on his company’s
systems as a personal affront and responded by making security a top
corporate priority. Google hired hundreds of security engineers with
six-figure signing bonuses, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in
security infrastructure and adopted a new internal motto, “Never again,” to
signal that it would never again allow anyone — be they spies or criminals
— to hack into Google customers’ accounts.

Yahoo, on the other hand, was slower to invest in the kinds of defenses
necessary to thwart sophisticated hackers that are now considered standard
in Silicon Valley, according to half a dozen current and former company
employees who participated in security discussions but agreed to describe
them only on the condition of anonymity.

When Marissa Mayer took over as chief executive of the flailing company in
mid-2012, security was one of many problems she inherited. With so many
competing priorities, she emphasized creating a cleaner look for services
like Yahoo Mail and developing new products over making security
improvements, the Yahoo employees said.

The “Paranoids,” the internal name for Yahoo’s security team, often clashed
with other parts of the business over security costs. And their requests
were often overridden because of concerns that the inconvenience of added
protection would make people stop using the company’s products.

But Yahoo’s choices had consequences, resulting in a series of embarrassing
security failures over the last four years. Last week, the company
disclosed that hackers backed by what it believed was an unnamed foreign
government stole the credentials of 500 million users in a breach that went
undetected for two years. It was the biggest known intrusion into one
company’s network, and the episode is now under investigation by both Yahoo
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Certainly, many big companies have struggled with cyberattacks in recent
years. But Yahoo’s security efforts appear to have fallen short, in
particular, when compared with those of banks and other big tech companies.

To make computer systems more secure, a company often has to make its
products slower and more difficult to use. It was a trade-off Yahoo’s
leadership was often unwilling to make.

In defense of Yahoo’s security, a company spokeswoman, Suzanne Philion,
said the company spent $10 million on encryption technology in early 2014,
and that its investment in security initiatives will have increased by 60
percent from 2015 to 2016.

“At Yahoo, we have a deep understanding of the threats facing our users and
continuously strive to stay ahead of these threats to keep our users and
our platforms secure,” she said.

The breach disclosed last week is the latest black eye for Ms. Mayer, whose
failed turnaround effort resulted in Yahoo’s agreement in July to sell its
core operations to Verizon for $4.8 billion. It is unclear whether the
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/technology/yahoo-hack-verizon.html>episode
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/technology/yahoo-hack-verizon.html>will
affect the sale. Although Yahoo’s email users are its most loyal and
frequent customers, the company has been losing market share in email for
years.

“Yahoo is already suffering. I don’t think they’ll suffer more because of
this,” said Avivah Litan, a security analyst with the research firm Gartner.

Ms. Mayer arrived at Yahoo about two years after the company was hit by the
Chinese military hackers. While Google’s response was public, Yahoo never
publicly admitted that it had also been attacked.

A former Google executive credited with creating the search company’s
simple, colorful aesthetic, Ms. Mayer turned her attention at Yahoo to
beating Google at search, creating new mobile apps, and turning Yahoo into
a video powerhouse with television-style broadcasts featuring big-name
talent like Katie Couric.

But in matters of security, Ms. Mayer, current and former employees said,
was far more reactive. In 2010, Google announced it would start paying
hackers “bug bounties” if they turned over security holes and problems in
its systems. Yahoo did not do the same until three years later, after it
lost countless security engineers to competitors and experienced a breach
of more than 450,000 Yahoo accounts in 2012 and a series of humiliating
spam attacks in 2013. Yahoo said it had paid out $1.8 million to bug
hunters.

In 2013, disclosures by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security
Agency contractor, showed that Yahoo was a frequent target for nation-state
spies. Yet it took a full year after Mr. Snowden’s initial disclosures for
Yahoo to hire a new chief information security officer, Alex Stamos.

Jeff Bonforte, the Yahoo senior vice president who oversees its email and
messaging services, said in an interview last December that Mr. Stamos and
his team had pressed for Yahoo to adopt end-to-end encryption for
everything. Such encryption would mean that only the parties in a
conversation could see what was being said, with even Yahoo unable to read
it.

Mr. Bonforte said he resisted the request because it would have hurt
Yahoo’s ability to index and search message data to provide new user
services. “I’m not particularly thrilled with building an apartment
building which has the biggest bars on every window,” he said.

The 2014 hiring of Mr. Stamos — who had a reputation for pushing for
privacy and antisurveillance measures — was widely hailed by the security
community as a sign that Yahoo was prioritizing its users’ privacy and
security.

The current and former employees say he inspired a small team of young
engineers to develop more secure code, improve the company’s defenses —
including encrypting traffic between Yahoo’s data centers — hunt down
criminal activity and successfully collaborate with other companies in
sharing threat data.

He also dispatched “red teams” of employees to break into Yahoo’s systems
and report back what they found. At competitors like Apple and Google, the
Yahoo Paranoids developed a reputation for their passion and contributions
to collaborative security projects, like Threat Exchange, a platform
created by Yahoo, Dropbox, Facebook, Pinterest and others to share
information on cyberthreats.

But when it came time to commit meaningful dollars to improve Yahoo’s
security infrastructure, Ms. Mayer repeatedly clashed with Mr. Stamos,
according to the current and former employees. She denied Yahoo’s security
team financial resources and put off proactive security defenses, including
intrusion-detection mechanisms for Yahoo’s production systems. Over the
last few years, employees say, the Paranoids have been routinely hired away
by competitors like Apple, Facebook and Google.

Mr. Stamos, who departed Yahoo for Facebook last year, declined to comment.
But during his tenure, Ms. Mayer also rejected the most basic security
measure of all: an automatic reset of all user passwords, a step security
experts consider standard after a breach. Employees say the move was
rejected by Ms. Mayer’s team for fear that even something as simple as a
password change would drive Yahoo’s shrinking email users to other services.

“Yahoo’s policy is that if we believe a user’s password has been
compromised, we lock the account until the user resets the password,” Ms.
Philion said.

With the 500 million accounts involved in the breach disclosed last week,
the stolen passwords were encrypted. Yahoo concluded the risk of misuse was
low so it notified users and encouraged them to reset their passwords
themselves.

On Tuesday, six Democratic senators, led by Patrick Leahy of Vermont, sent
a letter to Ms. Mayer demanding more details about the 2014 breach and what
Yahoo was doing to prevent a recurrence. Another senator, Mark Warner,
Democrat of Virginia, has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to
investigate Yahoo’s disclosures to investors regarding the incident. And
the company is already the subject of several class-action lawsuits from
users over the intrusion.
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