Bob Lord, who is the director of information security at Twitter has said that over 250,000 people’s usernames, emails and passwords have been stolen by hackers from the social networking site. This is the latest in a string of high-profile security breaches that have plagued US-based companies.
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After the attack, users started receiving emails saying that their account passwords have been invalidated. Recently, attacks on computers belonging to Wall Street Journal and the New York Times brought to light hacking attempts by alleged Chinese hackers. Lord went on to say that the Twitter attack was also a professional job and not one that was performed by amateurs.
Security experts have warned against publicizing the attack, saying that other hackers could start sending out phishing emails to gain sensitive data from users who think it is Twitter trying to contact them. Lord said that they were currently helping federal law enforcing agents and the government to persecute the attackers. He also said that since there were other high profile attacks of late, getting the information out to the public may help to raise awareness of potential future attacks.
In response to the accusations from the US, China said that the groundless allegations were quite irresponsible.
