According to security analysis, hackers gained the reach to the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on a hacking panel online.
Alon Gal, the co-creator of Israeli cybersecurity-monitoring organisation Hudson Rock, said on LinkedIn that the breach “will regrettably result in a lot of hacking, targeted phishing, and doxxing.” This one is the biggest leak of information I’ve ever seen, Gal declared.
Alon Gal initially discussed the news on social media on December 24, but since then, Twitter hasn’t made any enquiries regarding the breach or received any comments. What steps, if any, Twitter has taken to look into or fix the problem needs to be clarified.
Reuters themselves could not confirm that the information on the hacking forum was real and derived from Twitter. Most Twitter users have been sharing screenshots of the hacker forum where the information first appeared on Wednesday.
After viewing the data, Troy Hunt, the founder of the breach notification website, comments that it seems to be “very much what it’s been a character as.”
The identity or location of the hacker or hackers responsible for the intrusion was unknown. Before Elon Musk acquired control of the business last year, in 2021, that may have happened.
At first, there were conflicting reports on the magnitude and scope of the breach, with early reports in December claiming that 400 million email addresses and phone numbers were taken.
Data Protection Commission report:
A significant Twitter breach is interesting for the regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. The Elon Musk-owned company has been under the scrutiny of the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Twitter’s European headquarters are located, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for compliance with European data protection laws and a U.S. consent order, respectively. Lastly, the two regulators did not respond to messages promptly.
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