Hiding Yahoo from the public for many days or facing judicial investigation due to hacking
When the outside world worried that the sale of Yahoo's network core assets might rise again due to the hacking incident, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, asked the SEC in an open letter to investigate whether the company and its management deliberately concealed the incident from the public and investors during the asset sale process.
Mark Warner, a member of the Senate Intelligence and Finance Committee and co-founder of the bipartisan Senate Cyber Security Conference, accused Yahoo and its CEO Marissa Mayer of not officially disclosing this matter until last week in an open letter on the 26th, and he had known it as early as July. It also questioned that Yahoo did not disclose this matter to the public and investors in a timely manner.
It was reported on Wall Street before it heard that last Thursday, Yahoo confirmed that its company's data was leaked, saying that in 2014, at least 500 million user account related information was stolen from its network. The stolen account information may include name, email address, phone number, birthday, hashed passwords, and in some cases, It also includes encrypted or unencrypted password protection questions and answers. This also created the record of the largest single website information theft in history. Affected by this, Yahoo continued to decline in the following trading days.
The time point of this event disclosure is more sensitive. Earlier this year, Yahoo just sold its core network assets to Verizon Communications for $4.83 billion. The stolen account belongs to Yahoo's core network assets.
In response, Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL under Verizon Communications, said in an interview with CNBC today: "It is too early to comment on whether the incident will lead to the renegotiation of both parties", and "the contract provides sufficient protection for both parties of the transaction". After accepting the purchase, Tim Armstrong went to Yahoo headquarters for communication. Media reports say that if the merger is successful, Tim Armstrong will lead the merged business.
