News agency Reuters has reported exclusively that hackers working for certain western intelligence agencies broke into Russian Internet search company Yandex in late 2018 to spy on user accounts. They had used a rare type of malware in the attempt.
Yandex, though, has denied the allegations that user data was compromised. Their media relations team sent this statement to Whats New On The Net:
Cyber attacks are a common occurrence throughout the world. This particular attack was detected at an early stage by the Yandex security team. It was fully neutralized before any damage to Yandex customers’ data was done. At this point in time we are not disclosing any further details about the attack. The Yandex security team’s response ensured that no user data was compromised by the attack.
Ensuring the security of user data is of critical importance to us. Following the attempted attack, we took the necessary measures to ensure that we would not be susceptible to such an attack in the future. We continue to employ all relevant cyber defense tools and also cooperate with leading third-party experts and providers to protect our users’ privacy.
