Hackers have stolen the email addresses of nearly 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum.
On Thursday, citing a security researcher, the news agency Reuters reported this information.
“This is one of the most significant data breaches I’ve ever seen,” Alan Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity-auditing firm Hudson Rock, commented on LinkedIn.
On December 24, Alon posted about this for the first time through social media. However, Twitter has yet to comment on the report. Twitter is also silent on whether any initiative has been taken to investigate or resolve the issue.
The screenshots went viral online when the users’ information was released on a hacker forum on Wednesday.
There is no information yet on the identity or location of the hackers responsible for the incident. However, analysts believe that this event may have happened in 2021, before Elon Musk bought Twitter.
It was initially reported in December that the email addresses and phone numbers of 40 million users were stolen.
A large-scale data leak on Twitter could be of interest to regulatory agencies in 2 countries. In this case, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission and the US Central Trade Commission may take action against the company for violating European data protection laws and US non-objection orders, respectively.
Twitter’s European headquarters is located in Ireland.
