Twitter Hacked; 250K Users Affected by Cyber-Attack
Twitter confirmed on Friday that around 250,000 accounts were hacked and he email and personal information of users may have been compromised.
The social media site addressed the hacking in a blog post that stated the cyber-attack was done by "extremely sophisticated" criminals.
"This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident," wrote Bob Lord, Twitter's director of information security.
The data stolen included user names, emails, session tokens that are used to maintain a logged-in state, and passwords. The company stated the stolen passwords were encrypted and likely unable to be read by the hackers.
Twitter stated that there appears to be little damage possibly done by the attack other than the unauthorized publishing of attachments by accounts sent to certain email addresses.
Users affected by the attack had their passwords reset and their Twitter sessions terminated, and should have received an email informing them of the fact.
Wired Magazine posted the message in the email Twitter sent that warned people about "using websites or services that promise to get you lots of followers. These sites have been known to send spam updates and damage user accounts."
Twitter also advocated disabling Java in browsers as an additional security step, following the recent discovery of a separate security flaw in the web app platform.
The Department of Homeland Security warned that Java users may be at risk for future attacks and suggested that the public disable the program, according to NBC News.
This is the third high-profile hack to have surfaced in the last week: Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that their systems had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers, according to The Associated Press.
Whether the three attacks are related is not known, as the extent of the hacks has not been fully documented, but Twitter is reportedly gathering information to assist law enforcement agencies in order to track down the culprits.
Twitter users who want to find out if they might be affected and what their options are can take a look at a guide provided by The Guardian.
