Email addresses of 200mn Twitter users posted on hacking forum, may lead to phishing

Email addresses of over 200 million Twitter users were posted on a hacking forum on Wednesday, January 4, raising concerns regarding the database being used for targeted hacks, phishing attacks and ‘doxxing’, according to a Reuters report citing Alon Gal, chief executive of Israel-based cyber security firm, Hudson Rock. The breached database is seemingly linked to an initial database of over 400 million email addresses and linked phone numbers of Twitter users that Gal himself had posted about in December last year — although it is not clear as of now if the two databases are mutually exclusive, or is the second part of an initial data dump.

Gal called it “one of the most significant leaks” in recent times.

However, it is not clear if the breached data has already been used in exploits. The post by Gal claims that the exposed data set could data as far back as early 2021, which suggests that it may have been harvested by cyber attackers for a wide range of attacks. However, most such breached databases see the list of leaked details and credentials being bought by attackers and used in a distributed set of attacks — thus making it difficult to ascertain if a certain phishing attack could be linked to one specific data breach.

Twitter is yet to issue a statement on the matter, and has neither confirmed and nor denied the data breach.

This, however, is hardly the first instance of a data breach on the social media platform. In July last year, Twitter user credentials of over 5 million users were posted on a hacking forum. Twitter, then still under its pre-Elon Musk era, had confirmed the data breach, stating that it was informed about a vulnerability in its system in January 2022, which it later patched.