San Francisco/Washington — When it comes to Yahoo’s enormous security breach, the company was right about one thing. Yahoo has been saying since September that a state-sponsored actor was behind a hack in 2014 that compromised about 500-million of its user accounts, even as some security experts cast doubt on that claim. Yahoo gained a measure of vindication on Wednesday when the US government laid out charges against four individuals allegedly acting at the behest of the Russian government when they broke into Yahoo’s computer systems. "The indictment unequivocally shows the attacks on Yahoo were state-sponsored," the company said. "We are deeply grateful to the FBI for investigating these crimes and the department of justice for bringing charges against those responsible." Yahoo is not alone in meeting skepticism for asserting a hacking attack was the work of a foreign government. Companies sometimes make that claim, in some cases to help collect on cyber-insurance pay-outs or for...

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