Twitter has confirmed that the private information of Twitter users was accessed during the hack earlier this week. The information included email addresses and phone numbers, and in some cases, the intruders were able to download an archive of activity include direct messages and other sensitive content.
Social media website Twitter recently revealed that the accounts of 130 people on its platform were targeted in a recent hack that saw multiple high-profile accounts hijacked in order to promote a Bitcoin scam which reportedly generated over $100,000 for hackers.
The accounts hijacked include Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, Former President Barack Obama, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and the official accounts of ridesharing service Uber and tech giant Apple.
Now, the company has confirmed what many security experts suspected, the private information and direct messages (DM’s) of the hacked accounts was accessed by the hackers. In a blog post, Twitter confirmed that it is conducting a forensic review of all the accounts accessed to confirm all of the actions taken by hackers but that at least eight usernames had private information downloaded by hackers.
The blog post states:
For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account’s information through our “Your Twitter Data” tool. This is a tool that is meant to provide an account owner with a summary of their Twitter account details and activity. We are reaching out directly to any account owner where we know this to be true. None of the eight were verified accounts.
Twitter listed what information was accessed by the hackers writing:
- Attackers were not able to view previous account passwords, as those are not stored in plain text or available through the tools used in the attack.
- Attackers were able to view personal information including email addresses and phone numbers, which are displayed to some users of our internal support tools.
- In cases where an account was taken over by the attacker, they may have been able to view additional information. Our forensic investigation of these activities is still ongoing.
Read the full blog post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com