back to article Yahoo! boo! hoo! hoo!: Verizon! hits! brakes! on! $4.8bn! biz! gobble!

Yahoo!'s sale to Verizon has been delayed, following revelations last year of historical data security breaches. News of the deferral of the $4.8bn Verizon deal came as Yahoo! released its Q4 earnings results on Monday. "Yahoo! had previously stated that it expected to close the transaction in Q1," it said. "However, given …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Exclamations!

    I was hoping the sale would go through so that El Reg could retire its headline generator and save the world's dwindling supplies of exclamation marks.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Exclamations!

      And you just used another one in your Subject line! Oh crap, so did I! And I did it again!

      Okay, I'm better now. I was a contractor for Yahoo!'s Rewire project which sought to decrease the number of data centers worldwide from something like 56 down to a more reasonable 12-15. This was from 2011-2013 and one of the odd security practices I remember, and still try to clean up, is their use of a packaged file that contained every password to the different "secure" APIs that you could connect servers and services to. I say "still try to clean up" because I have a tar file from my laptop home dir that has this pesky thing housed it in when I accidentally scooped it up when backing up my home, and it pops up whenever I use it. So have to remember to remove the file .pkgpass

      All you had to be was a Service Engineer or similar admin with a bit of access and viola, you have this magical, and yet crazy, file in your home dir. That looked like a problem waiting to happen. :) My thought was that security must internally audit for access to these APIs from "uncool" sources and then do something about it. That's as maybe. Oh, we also had 5 different CEOs during my 18 months there. Five!

      1. Youngone Silver badge

        Re: Exclamations!

        I'm guessing the period when Yahoo! had 5 CEO's in 18 months was before they figured out they're just a holding company for some Alibaba shares.

        Now everyone can line up to tell me how profitable their ad services (or whatever) are.

        I still won't believe you.

  2. Ed_UK

    "Dear Yahoo user"

    Even genuine corporate emails are crafted to look like phishing attempts - pretty much in line with expectations.

    Dear Yahoo management,

    I would like to open a few Yahoo dropbox accounts for use with my spamming campaigns. Please ensure that your abuse@ account is disabled and you make it as awkward as possible to report any violations. Oh, you did that years ago? Great. Thanks.

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