Twitter: 32 million accounts may have been hacked and leaked

Hackers may have used malware in order to gain more than 32 million Twitter login-data that are now presumable being sold on the dark web. However, a Twitter spokesman said that “We are confident that these usernames and credentials were not obtained by a Twitter data breach – our systems have not been breached. In fact, we’ve been working to help keep accounts protected by checking our data against what’s been shared from recent other password leaks.”

LeakedSource, a site with a search engine of leaked login credentials, says that the respected data of Twitter contains 32,888,300 records consisting of email addresses, usernames and passwords.

Due to the provided information included in the respected data, for example the fact that passwords are displayed without encryption, LeakedSource stated that the data was collected by malware that has infected internet browsers rather than stolen directly from Twitter. In order to verify that the leaked data is valid, LeakedSource asked 15 users to verify their passwords. All of them confirmed that the passwords were correct.

However, Twitter stated that the hacking of accounts belonging to celebrities was due to the re-use of passwords that were leaked in the LinkedIn and Myspace breaches. A spokesman said that “A number of other online services have seen millions of passwords stolen in the past several weeks. We recommend people use a unique, strong password for Twitter”.

Whether or not the leaked data is valid, it is recommended to change passwords, not only when using the same password for several accounts.