A threat actor had leaked 209 million Twitter accounts containing email addresses and other information on a hacker forum earlier in 2021.
The top data breach news of the new year 2023 was that a hacker had leaked the personal data of 209 million Twitter account users on a hacker forum. Some claimed the social network site had been compromised, while some suggested that the data had been obtained after exploiting some old vulnerability or bug.
However, Twitter has finally addressed the rumours and refuted the claims that it was hacked or that a trove of data was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems.
The leaked database comprised usernames, follower counts, creation dates, and email addresses of Twitter users; no passwords, phone numbers, IP addresses, or physical addresses were leaked.
It is worth noting that Hackread.com had reported that the leaked data was obtained through web data scraping. For your information, data scraping or web scraping is the process of extracting data from websites. It can be done manually by a user, but it is more commonly done using automated tools.
Twitter’s Response
In its report published on Wednesday, January 11, 2023, Elon Musk’s Twitter said that “In response to recent media reports of Twitter users’ data being sold online, we conducted a thorough investigation and there is no evidence that data recently being sold was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems,” said Twitter.
The social network giant also addressed other recent cybersecurity incidents related to Twitter, such as the data leak of 5.4 million Twitter accounts and the sale of 400 million accounts on different hacker forums.
Nevertheless, the company has categorically denied any malicious attempt or breach of its system. “Based on information and intel analyzed to investigate the issue, there is no evidence that the data being sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems,” Twitter added. “The data is likely a collection of data already publicly available online through different sources,” they said.
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