SEC Reportedly Investigates Yahoo Over Massive Data Breaches

(RTTNews) - U.S. authorities are investigating whether Yahoo Inc.'s (YHOO) two massive data breaches should have been reported sooner to investors, the Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter.

The Journal reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation, and in December issued requests for documents, as it looks into whether the tech company's disclosures about the cyberattacks complied with civil securities laws. The SEC requires companies to disclose cybersecurity risks as soon as they are determined to have an effect on investors.

The investigation is likely to center on a 2014 data breach at Yahoo that compromised the data of at least 500 million users Yahoo disclosed that breach in September 2016, despite having linked the incident to state-sponsored hackers two years earlier.

In mid-December Yahoo also said it had recently discovered an August 2013 data breach that had exposed the private information of more than 1 billion Yahoo users.