Twitter HQ, under the new governorship of Elon Musk, has been generating even more headlines – this time relating to an apparent data breach.
Since his takeover for $44 million, there have been many publicity-seeking incidents led by Musk drawing attention to Twitter’s new era, however the breach appears to spell genuine trouble for Twitter that predates Musk.
200 million email addresses are thought to have been attained by hackers in the latest breach and posted to an online forum.
Twitter has remained silent about the breach which came to light on social media on 24 December although it is not officially confirmed that the data was hacked from Twitter. It is thought the cyberattack did happen.
The database was published to the hackers platform, BreachForums, on 4 February containing names and emails but not highly sensitive information. It follows a series of connected hacking attacks which were identified by a API vulnerability from June 2021 to January 2022.
In November, the data 5.4 million Twitter users was compromised including email addresses and phone numbers, which hackers attempt to sell on for $30,000 in July 2022.
In another scandal, a former Twitter worker was accused of actually working for the Saudi government to gather intelligence on Saudi dissidents to pass onto Bader al-Asaker. High-profile accounts have also been targeted in sophisticated bitcoin fraud. The timeline of Twitter data breaches dates back to January 2019.
