Private information of over 400 million Twitter users is up for sale on the black market, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Sundar Pichai, ‘Shark Tank’ stars Mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary and more.
Hacker exploited Twitter API vulnerability
Over 400 million Twitter users’ information, consisting of username, name, creation date, email, phone numbers, follower count are set to be sold by hackers. Cyber intelligence firm Hudson Rock disclosed that “a credible threat actor is selling 400,000,000 Twitter users data.”
Buterin had earlier discussed Elon Musk’s Twitter censorship. He posted on Twitter “The problem is the way in which the policies were introduced, seeming to retrofit around Elon’s views on very specific situations.”
On December 24, Hudson Rock tweeted about that carried the ransom demand and information about the attack: “In the post, the threat actor claims the data was obtained in early 2022 due to a vulnerability in Twitter, as well as attempting to extort @ElonMusk to buy the data or face GDPR lawsuits.” As sources suggest, Alon Gal, co-founder and CTO of the company, noted that data was fetched by hackers via API vulnerability to get any phone number or email in order to get back in Twitter profile.
Hackers: Musk should buy the stolen data
Few hours ago, a Twitter user posted that “Hacker is blackmailing @elonmusk claiming they risk a GDPR fine of up to $276 M like Facebook did & is offering Musk to buy this data. They also offered a casework as how this data can be used for Phishing, Crypto scams, Sim swapping, Doxxing & Governments spying on citizens.”
The Data Protection Commission launched an own-volition inquiry pursuant under ‘Data Protection Act 2018’ of section 110. They highlighted that Twitter users’ personal information datasets are publicly exposed online. These added to a total 5.4 million Twitter users globally.
As reported by The Washington Post, Twitter deal has brought the image of the “world’s richest man” down to earth. Elon Musk is stuck in the culture wars of his newly-owned social media company, which he bought for $44 billion on October 27, 2022. This has led to Tesla price tanking down from 20% in past few days. Further, almost 58% out of 17 million Twitter accounts disagreed as result of a poll conducted for Musk to continue as CEO.
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Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/12/29/nightmare-for-musks-twitter-as-over-400m-users-data-up-for-sale-on-the-black-market/