An Israeli cybersecurity monitoring group has revealed that, according to its study, hackers stole the email addresses, along with some other personal information, of more than 200 million Twitter users and published them on an online hacking forum on the dark web.
Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity surveillance firm Hudson Rock, took to LinkedIn and published a post revealing his firm’s discovery. He also added that unfortunately, due to the nature of the hack and the nature of the data stolen, the breach will lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxing.
As with Twitter since Musk acquired it, the social media platform has not commented on the report or responded to inquiries about the breach since that date. It’s still not clear what actions Twitter has taken to investigate or fix the issue, although this may also have to do with Musk disbanding all of Twitter’s media and communications teams.
Additionally, Musk doesn’t want a current Twitter employee to speak to the press and share any information.
Troy Hunt, creator of the Have I Been Pwned security breach notification website, looked at the leaked data and said on Twitter that it “looked pretty much as it was described”. There were no clues as to the identity or location of the hacker or the hackers behind the vulnerability. It could have happened as early as 2021 before Elon Musk took ownership of the company last year.
Claims about the size and scope of the breach initially varied, with early reports in December saying 400 million email addresses and phone numbers were stolen.
A serious violation on Twitter could interest regulators not only in the United States of America but also in Europe. The Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Twitter has its European headquarters, and the US Federal Trade Commission have monitored the Elon Musk-owned company for compliance with European data protection rules and a US consent order, respectively.
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