Twitter hacked again, email addresses and other details of over 200 million users stolen

An Israeli cybersecurity monitoring group has revealed that as per their study, hackers stole the email addresses along with some other personal data of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum on the dark web.

Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity-monitoring firm Hudson Rock, took to LinkedIn and put out a post revealing the discovery of his firm. He also added that because of the nature of the hack and the kind of data that was stolen, the breach will, unfortunately, lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxing.

As has been the case with Twitter since Musk took over, the social media platform has neither commented on the report, nor responded to inquiries about the breach since that date. It still isn’t not clear what action, if any, Twitter has taken to investigate or remediate the issue, although that may also have something to do with the fact that Musk has disbanded all of Twitter’s media relations and communications teams. 

Moreover, Musk doesn’t want any current Twitter employee to talk to the press and share any information whatsoever.

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 Twitter may interest regulators not just in the United States of America, but Europe as well. 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 US consent order respectively.

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