Yahoo CEO surrenders bonus over security lapses
Published: Mar 03, 2017
NEW DELHI, MAR 03, 2017: US tech giant Yahoo's top lawyer, Ronald S. Bell, has resigned and its CEO Marissa Mayer lost her 2016 bonus after a board investigation of the 2014 theft of information on over 500 million user accounts.
Senior executives, company lawyers and information security staff were aware of the hack and also knew about subsequent attempts to break into the affected accounts in 2015 and 2016 but failed to "properly comprehend or investigate" the situation, Yahoo's board of directors said in a securities filing.
Bell, a long-time lawyer at Yahoo, resigned on Wednesday and would receive no severance payments in connection with his departure.
The company's chief information security officer at the time of the 2014 breach, Alex Stamos, left for Facebook in 2015 after repeated battles with Mayer over security priorities.
The hackers, which Yahoo believes were connected to a foreign government, used the stolen information to forge a type of software called a "cookie" that could be used to access 32 million Yahoo accounts.
Under Mayer's employment agreement, her annual target bonus is $2 million a year and her annual stock award is supposed to be no less than $12 million a year. Her base salary is $1 million a year.
Yahoo said it had revised its procedures for responding to cyber security incidents, including the reporting of such incidents to senior executives and the board. The company has incurred $16 million in direct costs so far related to the breaches.