Saturday 2 February 2013

250,000 Twitter accounts compromised in security breach

Social networking site Twitter has revealed that around 250,000 user accounts have been compromised by anonymous hackers in a massive security breach.

"This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data," Bob Lord, Twitter's director of information security, writes in a blog post.

The site discovered one live attack that it was able to shut down several minutes later but not before the hackers had gained access to thousands of accounts. The attack on Twitter is the latest in a string of high-profile security breaches on US technology and media companies.

This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident. The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked. For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users.

Some media portals also relate this attack to Hacktivist Anonymous Group incorrectly, because twitter itself no where mention anything about who is attacker! If you are not using good password hygiene, take a moment now to change your Twitter passwords.

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