Elon Musk headed company, Twitter has had an action-packed experience, this year. Amidst the hurdles faced by the tech company, there is something new to tackle. As per the latest reports, personal data from 40 crore twitter handles has been stolen by some unknown hacker which include Google CEO Sunder Pichai and Actor Salman Khan. Not only this, the stolen data has allegedly been put up for sale on the dark web.
The dark web is a part of the World Wide Web that is only accessible to special software users by remaining anonymous or untraceable which can have both legal and illegal applications. But it has been reported that the dark web has been largely used for the illicit purposes. The Internet has a significant number of web pages, servers, and databases which run throughout the day. The dark web works under the cloak of surface web and is covered by the deep web.
The issue that we are witnessing regarding the dark web, is that of the identity theft. Identity theft monitoring is significant to be tracked in order to keep one’s personal data secured. Malicious users use the personal data of the legit users and put it up for sale on the dark web for profit. Personal information which they access includes the passwords, physical address, bank account numbers, social security numbers, and more. Wickedness of this sort can cause one financial theft and may cause harm to one’s reputation.
Also Read : Uber has become a victim of data breach
Israeli cyber intelligence company Hudson Rock has revealed that the emails, usernames, followers, and phone numbers of crores of Twitter handles have been stolen. Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has ordered probe into the data leak incident of 5.4 million users, which happened months ago.
Here, accounts of several high-profile personalities and organisations have been targeted from across the world, few of them are, SpaceX, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, CBS Media, Charlie Puth, Donald Trump Jr., Salman Khan, NBA, NASA’s JWST account, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India, Shawn Mendes, and others.
According to Hudson Rock, the hacker may have been succeeded in doing so due to API vulnerability. Details of crores of accounts could have been accessed through a bug. In the screenshot of the hacker’s post, shared by Hudson Rock, the hacker has warned Twitter of the forthcoming threat of GDPR fine over 5.4m breach; to circumvent the same, the hacker has placed an option to buy the data exclusively. Hacker’s deal is open through a middleman as well, as mentioned. The warning stated that the deal will prevent a lot of celebrities from Crypto scams, Phishing, Sim swapping and others; and the Twitter has been warned against the loss of the goodwill by further targeting of the influencers. Though, there is no confirmation neither by the Twitter nor Elon Musk as far as the data leak is concerned.