Massive Twitter data breach worse that reported; multiple hacks


A massive Twitter data breach last year, exposing more than five million phone numbers and email addresses, was worse than initially reported. We’ve been shown evidence that the same security vulnerability was exploited by multiple bad actors, and the hacked data has been offered for sale on the dark web by several sources.

It had previously been thought that only one hacker gained access to the data, and Twitter’s belated admission reinforced this impression …

Background

HackerOne first reported the vulnerability back in January, which allowed anyone to enter a phone number or email address, and then find the associated twitterID. This is an internal identifier used by Twitter, but can be readily converted to a Twitter handle.

A bad actor would be able to put together a single database which combined Twitter handles, email addresses, and phone numbers.

At the time, Twitter admitted that the vulnerability had existed, and subsequently been patched, but said nothing about anyone exploiting it.

Restore Privacy subsequently reported that a hacker had indeed used the vulnerability to obtain personal data from millions of accounts.

A verified Twitter vulnerability from January has been exploited by a threat actor to gain account data allegedly from 5.4 million users. While Twitter has since patched the vulnerability, the database allegedly acquired from this exploit is now being sold on a popular hacking forum, posted earlier today.

Twitter subsequently confirmed the hack.

In July 2022, we learned through a press report that someone had potentially leveraged this and was offering to sell the information they had compiled. After reviewing a sample of the available data for sale, we confirmed that a bad actor had taken advantage of the issue before it was addressed.

Massive Twitter data breach plural, not singular

There were suggestions on Twitter yesterday that the same personal data had been accessed by multiple bad actors, not just one. 9to5Mac has now seen evidence that this is indeed the case. We were shown a dataset which contained the same information in a different format, with a security researcher stating that it was “definitely a different threat…

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