Americas

Twitter latest target in cyber attack

Social networking site says hackers may have accessed 250,000 user accounts days after US papers were targeted.
Last Modified: 02 Feb 2013 01:53
Twitter says it had already reset the passwords of users affected by the hacking attempt and will notify them soon

Hackers have targeted Twitter, gaining “limited” access to around 250,000 user accounts, the social networking site announced on Friday.

“This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data,” a blog post by Twitter’s director of information security said.

The post said hackers may have accessed “usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords.”

Twitter said it had already reset passwords for affected users, and will notify them soon.

The cyber attack comes days after US newspapers the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal revealed their respective websites had been the target of a well-coordinated hacking effort.

"This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident," Twitter said.

"The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked."

The company did not specifically link the attacks to China in the blog post, in contrast to the newspapers, which both said the hackers originated in China.

176

Source:
Al Jazeera
Topics in this article
Country
Featured on Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera's exclusive publishing of a key Guantanamo prison military document lays bare the brutality of force-feeding.
Former military official says poverty and anger in indigenous communities mean conditions for an "insurgency" are ripe.
A four-part series that gives a rare insight into the country on the move, with history in tow.
Series on the Palestinian 'catastrophe' of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures.
Featured
A four-part series that gives a rare insight into the country on the move, with history in tow.
Series on the Palestinian 'catastrophe' of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures.
Two years since the start of the uprising, rebels and Assad's forces remain locked in conflict.
China aims to expand its influence in the resource rich area.
Extensive coverage of war crimes tribunals and controversial calls for blasphemy laws.
join our mailing list