Millions of Twitter Users’ Data Stolen and Posted Online

Twitter has consistently been in the news this year, and for good reason. The social media platform has gone through major and rapid changes, with concerns those changes could put users’ data in jeopardy. Those concerns may be valid, but, as it turns out, Twitter didn’t need its current drama to put user data in harms way.

According to BleepingComputer, over 5.4 million users had public and private data stolen from a vulnerability patched in January. The data includes sensitive information like email addresses and phone numbers, making this a serious leak. This data has been shared to a hacker forum free of charge, so any malicious user could use the data for their own purposes.

This data hasn’t always been available to the hacker population at large. Reportedly, a malicious user placed the data on a separate hacking forum back in July, charging $30,000 for the privilege. As if this weren’t bad enough, there is another leak of data from 1.4 million users found from a different vulnerability, bringing the total number of affected users to nearly 7 million.

However, it’s possible there was an ever larger leak we haven’t seen yet. There are potentially tens of millions of users’ data available in another data dump that was stolen using this same vulnerability.

These security breaches resulted from two vulnerabilities, one of which was plugged in January of this year. It speaks to how fragile user security really can be, and how any vulnerability can compromise the data of those users. It’s incumbent upon companies like Twitter to keep their users’ data safe, but with the volatility the company is currently experiencing, it isn’t clear if they’re up for the challenge.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash