Since Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired ownership of Twitter in an October deal valued at $44 billion (approximately Rs. 3,64,000 crore), the social media site has been in disarray. There were several firm layoffs, significant policy adjustments, and platform regulation worries that followed. Currently, Twitter may be dealing with a significant data breach that could jeopardize user privacy. A report claims that 40 crore Twitter users' data, including that of well-known public personalities like Google CEO Sundar Pichai and American lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been made available for sale. The perpetrator of the leak is also allegedly attempting to blackmail Twitter CEO Elon Musk into buying the data.
Security company Hudson Rock, which discovered the breach initially, claims that a "threat actor" has gotten the personal information of over 40 crore people and is now selling it. Sensitive data including phone numbers and emails are contained in the database.
The company explained in its tweets that the perpetrator of the breach is "credible" and claims to have obtained the data in early 2022 by taking advantage of a flaw on Twitter. A sampling of the material, which included private information about well-known people including Donald Trump Jr., Sundar Pichai, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was also made available by the threat actor.
"A reliable threat actor is selling the data of 400,000,000 Twitter users, according to Hudson Rock. Apocalyptic amounts of information, including the emails and phone numbers of prominent people like AOC, Kevin O'Leary, Vitalik Buterin, and others, are contained in the private database. The cybercrime intelligence firm tweeted this.
Screenshots of the hacker's December 23 blog post about the data breach were shared by Hudson Rock. Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, looks to be the target of the extortion attempt. "Twitter or Elon Musk are already at risk of a GDPR fine over 5.4 million breaches, picturing the fine of 400 million users breach sources, if you are reading this. By purchasing this data solely, you can avoid having to pay the $276 million USD in fines for GDPR violations that Facebook had to pay (due to the scraping of 533 million users).
Under the handle Ryushi, the user provided a sample database of 1,000 users, including the accounts of the Indian information and broadcasting ministry as well as those of prominent individuals including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Brian Krebs, Vitalik Buterin, Kevin O'Leary, and Donald Trump Jr.
The individual forewarned Twitter and its CEO Elon Musk of the repercussions of such a huge data breach, including severe fines under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
This time, a hacker who wished to remain anonymous shared a sample of data on a hacker forum. The sample data showed what kind of information are offered for sale on the dark web. Additionally, it came to light that a number of well-known accounts had also been compromised. Several of these prominent account holders consist.
This is not Twitter's first experience with a data leak. Online sales of 5.4 million individuals' Twitter data began in August. The impact of the breach was acknowledged by Twitter to be international. Last Monday, Meta agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the firm of allowing third parties to access customer personal information by paying $725 million (approximately Rs. 6,000 crore).
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