Yahoo's one billion users' credentials for sale for $300,000

How much is a Yahoo user worth? About $0.0003, apparently

The user credentials hacked from Yahoo's one billion users are reportedly for sale on the so-called 'dark web' - and valued at just fractions of a penny per user.

According to reports, the whole lot are up for sale for just $300,000, or $0.0003 per account.

The news comes after Yahoo admitted that it had been hacked in 2013 with credentials for pretty much all of its accounts compromised. Many, though, will be dormant or 'throwaway' accounts.

The latest Yahoo hack is unrelated to the breach that saw the information of 500,000 users pilfered back in September 2014.

Stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, "hashed" passwords and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.

This data has already been sold, according to Andrew Komarov, chief intelligence officer at InfoArmor, who told Bloomberg that three buyers - including two known spammers and an entity that appeared more interested in espionage - paid about $300,000 (or $0.0003 per account) each for a complete copy of the billion-user database.

Komarov noted that the database is still up for sale, though bids for it have now plummeted as low as $20,000 as Yahoo has forced a password reset.

"The Yahoo hack makes cyber espionage extremely efficient," Komarov said. "Personal information and contacts, e-mail messages, objects of interest, calendars and travel plans are key elements for intelligence-gathering in the right hands.

"The difference of Yahoo hack between any other hack is in that it may really destroy your privacy, and potentially have already destroyed it several years ago without your knowledge."

Komarov told Bloomberg that more than 150,000 US government and military employees' details were also found in the database, which means that hackers could target those users' accounts to threaten national security.

These accounts reportedly belong to current and former White House staff, congressmen and their aides, FBI agents, officials at the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and each branch of the US military.

Yahoo said in a statement that it could not Komarov's claims: "The limited InfoArmor data set provided to us by Bloomberg, based on initial analysis, could be associated with the data file provided to us by law enforcement.

"That said, if InfoArmor has a report or more information, Yahoo would want to assess that before further comment," it added.