400 Million Twitter Users Compromised:
The Firm Hudson Rock, which specialized in cybercrime, revealed that 400 million personal data of Twitter users had recently been sold on the black market. In addition to Vitalik Buterin and Donald Trump, the French Ministry of Justice is among the victims.
Details Twitter Data Leak:
This information was revealed by the firm Hudson Rock, which specializes in cybercrime. According to their information, more than 400 million personal data of Twitter users are currently for sale on the black market of the dark web.
The company identifies this data leak as a “credible threat”. The database of sensitive data held by this hacker includes email addresses and phone numbers used to create accounts on the social network.
Among the 400 million potential victims, there are obviously influential people. In fact, the hacker’s sale announcement is accompanied by a sample of 1000 lines given as an example. These include Vitalik Buterin, the prominent co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), Donald Trump and even the French Ministry of Justice.
As Hudson Rock explains in its release, the hacker says he retrieved this information in early 2022, thanks to a flaw identified in the Twitter application. However, the intelligence firm does not feel it can confirm the veracity of every line in this database.
On the other hand, DeFiYield looked at the 1,000 rows shared as an example by the hacker and claimed that this sample did match the actual data. That said, it is surprising that a data leak was not spotted earlier by Twitter teams and Elon Musk when he bought the company, especially since the number of active users of the social network amounts to 450 million per month.
Hacker Calls Out Elon Musk:
If this data leak is true, it could be a real concern for players in the crypto ecosystem operating anonymously — or pseudonymously — on Twitter, as their identities could be revealed. The threat is even greater for scammers, who could face legal action for their misdeeds.
Of course, the threat is mostly to ordinary users. These email addresses could be used by malicious actors to carry out phishing. Indeed, email is still today a very used vector to perpetuate scams allowing to steal cryptos or NFTs.
In addition to putting the data file up for sale, the hacker called out to Elon Musk. He demanded to get paid $276 million to avoid the sale of the data as well as a fine from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) agency.