Twitter Hack: Private data of 40 million users for sale; Hackers blackmail CEO Elon Musk: Report
Twitter has been in turmoil since Tesla CEO Elon Musk took control of the social networking platform in a deal worth $44 billion (approximately Rs 3,64,000) in October. Mass layoffs at the company, major policy changes, and regulatory concerns about the platform followed. Now, Twitter may be facing a massive data breach that could threaten users’ personal information. According to a report, the data of 40,000 Twitter users, including such famous public figures as American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, is for sale. Furthermore, the individual behind the breach is also said to be trying to blackmail Twitter CEO Elon Musk into buying data.
According to cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock, for the first time detect In the breach, the private data of more than 40 million individuals was obtained by a “threat actor” and is now for sale. The database includes sensitive information such as emails and phone numbers.
In their tweets, the company explains that the individual responsible for the breach is “trusted” and claims to have collected the data as early as 2022 by exploiting a vulnerability in Twitter. The threat actor also provided a data sample, revealing the personal information of famous individuals such as Donald Trump Jr., Sundar Pichai and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Hudson Rock posted a screenshot of a data breach post from a hacker, published on December 23. This individual appears to be blackmailing the Twitter CEO Elon Musk on the leak. “Twitter or Elon Musk if you are reading this, you risked a GDPR fine for a 5.4 million image violation fine by the source of the 400 million user violation. Your best option to avoid paying $276 million in GDPR violation fines like Facebook did (collected by 533 million users) is to buy this data exclusively.”
The threat agent’s claims have yet to be verified, but Hudson Rock says that the breached data appears to be legitimate.
This is not the first data breach that Twitter has faced. In August, Twitter data of 5.4 million users went up for sale online. Twitter already has confirmed that the impact of the breach is global. Last week meta agreed must pay $725 million (approximately Rs 6,000) to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of allowing third parties to access users’ personal information.
