YahooXtra email accounts compromised following security breach

Some of the user accounts of Telecom's YahooXtra have been reportedly compromised, following a security breach, which is apparently affecting non-Telecom customers as well.

Telecom said that Yahoo had acknowledged an email security breach that compromised some YahooXtra email accounts.

According to stuff.co.nz, spokeswoman Lucy Fullarton said that Yahoo was investigating the breach and it was unclear if the hackers were able to read the content of the emails.

It is said that hackers had tried sending out spam emails from the compromised accounts, but Yahoo had prevented that and starting blocking the compromised accounts, requiring customers to then reset their passwords.

Meanwhile, Telecom did not reveal the number of YahooXtra accounts compromised and was unaware if the problem was a continuation of the 'cross-site scripting' (XSS) that are said to be behind the web portal's problems last year that compromised tens of thousands of accounts.

The report said that Telecom had outsourced its email service to Yahoo in 2007 and had considered dumping Yahoo as its email provider last year in response to its security woes.