Verizon will continue its effort to acquire Yahoo, despite the massive data breach scandal. But the scandal in September may prompt the company to renegotiate the deal.
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said that he was not shocked with the Yahoo hacking scandal as reported by CNBC. He said that since Internet is not a safe place, therefore the attack is a matter of when.
"Certainly not anything we wanted to have happen. Certainly we're going to do everything we can to fortify ourselves," he said in the Internet Association's Virtuous Cycle conference in Menlo Park, California. "But I think people are beginning to realize this is part of the way the internet operates."
Following the attack, it is likely Verizon would want to renegotiate the acquisition deal to ask for the better one. Verizon agreed to acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billion in July. Currently, Verizon still assess the impact of the hacking to its business.
Yahoo announced the hacking has stolen 500 million users data from its database on Sept. 20. The data breach seems to be the largest data breach in history.Although the scale of data stolen is enormous, but the potential damage to users is low, because users' financial information was safe and uncompromised.
Users information which had been stolen including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, passwords, security questions and answers. But Yahoo said since the password is encrypted with advanced cryptographic technology, the password is safe. The perpetrator was suspected to be a state-sponsored actor, which McAdams said to have a lot of resources.
Many people have put the Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer under fire for the attack. According to Washington Post, the hacking scandal is another security incident that showed her poor leadership. Another security scandal was uncovered early this month, when she hid her initiatives to allow
U.S. intelligence community to scan incoming emails of all Yahoo users.