Email addresses of greater than 200 million Twitter customers have been stolen by hackers and posted on an internet hacking discussion board, a safety researcher mentioned on Wednesday.
The breach “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxxing,” Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity-monitoring agency Hudson Rock, wrote on LinkedIn. He known as it “one of the most significant leaks I’ve seen.”
Twitter has not commented on the report, which Gal first posted about on social media on Dec. 24, nor responded to inquiries in regards to the breach since that date. It was not clear what motion, if any, Twitter has taken to analyze or remediate the problem.
Screenshots of the hacker discussion board, the place the information appeared on Wednesday, have been circulated on-line.
Troy Hunt, creator of breach-notification web site Have I Been Pwned, considered the leaked information and mentioned on Twitter that it appeared “pretty much what it’s been described as.”
There had been no clues to the identification or location of the hacker or hackers behind the breach. It could have taken place as early as 2021, which was earlier than Elon Musk took over possession of the corporate final yr.
Claims in regards to the dimension and scope of the breach initially diversified with early accounts in December saying 400 million e-mail addresses and cellphone numbers had been stolen.
A significant breach at Twitter could curiosity regulators on each side of the Atlantic. The Data Protection Commission in Ireland, the place Twitter has its European headquarters, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have been monitoring the Elon Musk-owned firm for compliance with European information safety guidelines and a U.S. consent order respectively.
