Yahoo Claims a Server Attack was not the Shellshock Bug

• By Matt Holden
• Oct 07, 2014

Yahoo has fixed a bug in their system which was initially discovered by hackers who were attempting to exploit the Shellshock bug on the company’s network. According to a report, Yahoo made a statement issuing the attack.

“Earlier today, we reported that we isolated a handful of servers that were detected to have been impacted by a security flaw,” said Alex Stamos, Yahoo’s chief information security officer. “After investigating the situation fully, it turns out that the servers were in fact not affected by Shellshock.”

Yahoo was originally notified of the attack by Johnathan Hall, senior engineer and president of security consulting firm Future South Technologies, in a blog post.

Servers used by Yahoo to stream sports were targeted by hackers trying to find vulnerabilities for the Shellshock bug, but instead the code they used happened to work in a different way and prompted an intrusion quickly after Yahoo patched their servers for Bash, a command interpreter bug.

Stamos has reiterated the fact that no user data was stolen or corrupted. Hall however, feels differently. “I am flat out accusing Stamos, and Yahoo, of being dishonest and inaccurate in their reports of this breach, as well as being grossly negligent to their users and shareholders by releasing inaccurate and misleading information,” said Hall.