Twitter was hacked, 200 million users’ email addresses were leaked, says a researcher – Telegrafi

Hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum, a security researcher said Wednesday.

The breach “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, phishing and doxxing,” Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity monitoring firm Hudson Rock, wrote on LinkedIn. He called it “one of the most important leaks I’ve ever seen,” the Telegraph reports.

Twitter has not commented on the report, which Gal first posted on social media on December 24, nor has it responded to questions about the breach since that date. It was not clear what action, if any, Twitter took to investigate or resolve the issue.

Reuters could not independently verify whether the data in the forum was authentic and came from Twitter. Screenshots of the hacker forum where the data appeared on Wednesday circulated online.

Troy Hunt, creator of the breach reporting site Have I Been Pwned, saw the leaked data and said on Twitter that it looked “pretty much as described.”

There was no information about the identity or location of the hacker or hackers behind the breach. It could have happened as early as 2021, before Elon Musk bought the company.

Claims about the size and scope of the breach initially varied, with initial reports in December saying 400 million email addresses and phone numbers had been stolen.

A serious Twitter breach could be of interest to regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. The Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Twitter has its European headquarters, and the US Federal Trade Commission have monitored the Elon Musk-owned company for compliance with European data protection regulations and a US consent order. /Telegraph/