First LinkedIn, Now Twitter ... Hacked User IDs For Sale

There is yet another hack for users of popular social media sites to worry about. Hackers may have used malware to collect more than 32 million Twitter login credentials that are now being sold on the dark web. Twitter says that its systems have not been breached.

“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,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

LeakedSource, a site with a search engine of leaked login credentials, said in a blog post that it received a copy of the user information from “Tessa88@exploit.im,” the same alias used by the person who hacked the data from a Russian social media site.

Other major security compromises which have hit the news recently include a Myspace hack that involved over 360 million accounts, possibly making it the largest one ever, and the leak of 100 million LinkedIn passwords stolen in 2012.

LeakedSource says the cache of Twitter data contains 32,888,300 records, including email addresses, usernames, and passwords. LeakedSource has added the information to its search engine, which is paid but lets people remove leaked information for free.

Based on information in the data (including the fact that many of the passwords are displayed in plaintext), LeakedSource believes that the user credentials were collected by malware infecting browsers like Firefox or Chrome rather than stolen directly from Twitter. Many of the affected users appear to be in Russia—six of the top 10 email domains represented in the database are Russian, including mail.ru and yandex.ru.

Even though Mark Zuckerberg got several of his non-Facebook social media accounts hacked this week, including Twitter, his information wasn’t included in this data set, LeakedSource claims. Zuckerberg was ridiculed for appearing to reuse “dadada” as his password on multiple sites, but results from LeakedSource’s data analysis shows that many people are much less creative. The most popular password, showing up 120,417 times, was “123456,” while “password” appears 17,471 times. An analysis of the VK data also turned up similar results.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Twitter suggested that the recent hijacking of accounts belonging to Zuckerberg and other celebrities was due to the re-use of passwords leaked in the LinkedIn and Myspace breaches.

“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,” a Twitter spokesperson said. Twitter suggests that users follow the suggestions in its help center to keep their accounts secure. Twitter also posted on its @Support account that it is auditing its data against recent database dumps.

LeakedSource said that it determined the validity of the leaked data by asking 15 users to verify their passwords. All 15 confirmed that the passwords listed for their accounts were correct. However, experts cautioned that the data may not be legitimate.

Michael Coates, Twitter’s trust and information security officer, tweeted that he is confident the social media platform’s systems have not been compromised.

We have investigated reports of Twitter usernames/passwords on the dark web, and we're confident that our systems have not been breached.

“We securely store all passwords w/ bcrypt,” Coates added, referencing a password hashing function considered secure. “We are working with LeakedSource to obtain this info & take additional steps to protect users,” he continued.

Troy Hunt, the creator of a site that catalogs breaches called haveibeenpwned.com, also expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the data. Hunt told TechCrunch that he’d heard rumors of breaches at Twitter and Facebook for several weeks but had yet to see convincing proof. “They may well be old leaks if they’re consistent with the other big ones we’ve seen and simply haven’t seen the light of day yet. Incidentally, the account takeovers we’ve seen to date are almost certainly as a result of credential reuse across other data breaches,” Hunt said.

Whether or not the leaked Twitter credentials are authentic, it never hurts to change your password — especially if you use the same password across several sites. Turning on two-factor authentication also helps keep your account secure, even if your password is leaked.

TechCrunch:

« The FBI Is Looking For A Fight Over Encryption
MI5's Uncontrolled Bulk Data Collection »

CyberSecurity Jobsite
Perimeter 81

Directory of Suppliers

ManageEngine

ManageEngine

As the IT management division of Zoho Corporation, ManageEngine prioritizes flexible solutions that work for all businesses, regardless of size or budget.

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout enables cyber security professionals to reduce cyber risk to their organization with proactive security solutions, providing immediate improvement in security posture and ROI.

LockLizard

LockLizard

Locklizard provides PDF DRM software that protects PDF documents from unauthorized access and misuse. Share and sell documents securely - prevent document leakage, sharing and piracy.

CSI Consulting Services

CSI Consulting Services

Get Advice From The Experts: * Training * Penetration Testing * Data Governance * GDPR Compliance. Connecting you to the best in the business.

North Infosec Testing (North IT)

North Infosec Testing (North IT)

North IT (North Infosec Testing) are an award-winning provider of web, software, and application penetration testing.

Riverbed Technology

Riverbed Technology

The Riverbed Network and Application Performance Platform enables organizations to visualize, optimize, accelerate and remediate the performance of any network for any application.

Casaba Security

Casaba Security

Casaba are specialists in software security providing managed Software Development Lifecycle services as well as products for security testing.

Airbus Cybersecurity

Airbus Cybersecurity

Airbus CyberSecurity is a European specialist in cyber security. Our mission is to protect governments, military and critical national infrastructure enterprises from cyber threats.

Tukan IT

Tukan IT

Tukan IT provides a data classification and protection solution.

Wibu-Systems

Wibu-Systems

Wibu-Systems is a leading provider of solutions for the Digital Rights Management (DRM) and anti-piracy industry.

Wind River

Wind River

Wind River delivers the technology and expertise that enables the deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent connected systems.

TryHackMe

TryHackMe

TryHackMe is an online platform that teaches cyber security through short, gamified real-world labs. We have content for both complete beginners and seasoned hackers.

Spike Reply

Spike Reply

Spike Reply is the company within the Reply Group focusing on cybersecurity and personal data protection.

Factmata

Factmata

Factmata is an social and news media monitoring and analytics product that uses AI to identify and track narratives online, highlighting those most likely to cause brand harm or misinform the public.

Information Security Officers Group (ISOG)

Information Security Officers Group (ISOG)

ISOG's mission is to strengthen information security through awareness and education programs, promoting community and fellowship among information security leaders.

The CyberWire

The CyberWire

The CyberWire gets people up to speed on cyber quickly and keeps them a step ahead in a continually changing industry.

Catalyst Campus For Technology & Innovation

Catalyst Campus For Technology & Innovation

Catalyst Campus is a collaborative ecosystem to create community, spark innovation and stimulate business growth.

AuthMind

AuthMind

Prevent your next identity-related cyberattack with the AuthMind Identity SecOps Platform. It works anywhere and deploys in minutes.

Prompt Security

Prompt Security

Prompt Security provides an LLM agnostic approach to ensure security, data privacy and safety across all aspects of Generative AI.

Seal Security

Seal Security

Seal Security revolutionizes software supply chain security operations, empowering organizations to automate and scale their open source vulnerability remediation and patch management.

DOT Europe

DOT Europe

DOT Europe is a consensus based organisation which brings a diverse membership together to agree on their collective stance on EU tech policy.