A security researcher said Wednesday that hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users. Hackers put them on a website for other hackers.
The breach “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing, and doxxing,” Alon Gal . He is the co-founder of the Israeli cybersecurity-monitoring firm Hudson Rock . He said that it was “one of the most important leaks”. His words indicate it can be very impactful.
Twitter hasn’t said anything about the report since Gal first posted about it on social media on December 24. They also haven’t answered any questions about the breach since that date. It wasn’t clear if Twitter had done anything to look into or fix the problem.
Reuters was not able to confirm on its own that the information on the forum was real and came from Twitter. Online, people have shared screenshots of the hacker forum from Wednesday.
Troy Hunt analyzed the exposed data. He started the website “Have I Been Pwned”. People can report security breaches. Later he tweeted that it was “very much what it’s been called.”
There were no hints about the identity or location of the hacker or hackers responsible for the intrusion. It may have happened as early as 2021, before Elon Musk took over control of the corporation last year.
At first, people didn’t agree on how big and wide the hack was. For example, early reports in December informed 400 million email addresses leaks. Phone numbers leak was in the reports too.
A huge Twitter breach may interest authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. The Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Twitter’s European offices are, and the FTC in the U.S. are watching the Elon Musk-owned firm. It is only to ensure it complies European data protection standards and a U.S. consent decree.
On Thursday regulators received messages. But they didn’t answer right away.