After large-scale employee firing and advertisers’ revolt, Elon Musk-owned Twitter is now reportedly hit with a hacker attack.
Hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum, a security researcher said Wednesday, Reuters reported.
Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity-monitoring firm Hudson Rock, who reported the hacker attack, said it was one of the most significant leaks he has seen.
The breach “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxxing,” Gal wrote on LinkedIn.
Reuters said Twitter has not commented on the report, which Gal first posted about on social media on Dec. 24, nor responded to inquiries about the breach since that date.
It could not be ascertained whether or not Twitter has initiated any action to investigate or remediate the issue.
Screenshots of the hacker forum, where the data appeared on Wednesday, have circulated online.
Reuters said it could not independently verify the data on the forum was authentic and came from Twitter.
Troy Hunt, creator of breach-notification site Have I Been Pwned, viewed the leaked data and said on Twitter that it seemed “pretty much what it’s been described as.”
There were no clues to the identity or location of the hacker or hackers behind the breach. It may have taken place as early as 2021, which was before Elon Musk took over ownership of the company last year.
Claims about the size and scope of the breach initially varied with early accounts in December saying 400 million email addresses and phone numbers were stolen.
A major breach at the microblogging site may interest regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Twitter has its European headquarters, and the US Federal Trade Commission have been monitoring the Elon Musk-owned company for compliance with European data protection rules and a U.S. consent order respectively.
Follow us on
