Twitter is set to buy back around 400 million user data for $200,000. Thus, the short message service could escape a fine due to data protection violations. But the authorities are already investigating an earlier incident against the tech group.
The 400 million user data are offered in a hacker forum. In addition to the conventional data, non-public information such as telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of celebrities should also be disclosed. In the forum, the hacker wrote to “Twitter or Elon Musk” under the alias “Ryushi”. “To avoid being fined $276 million in the EU, like Facebook did, your best option is to buy this data exclusively.” . In a hacker forum, around half a billion pieces of data were offered by Facebook users. At that time, the authority issued the parent company Meta with a fine of 276 million dollars.
BLACKMAILER ADDRESSES “TWITTER OR ELON MUSK”.
In the blackmail attempt, the perpetrator did not demand a specific sum from “Twitter or Elon Musk”. But the tech magazine “Bleeping Computer” found out in a chat with the provider that he was asking for $200,000 and only then wanted to delete the data. If no deal should come about, “Ryushi” wants to sell the data several times for $ 60,000 each. However, there is no guarantee that the data will be deleted. At the same time, it is unclear whether there are really 400 million data sets. According to Twitter boss Musk , the platform has around 250 million daily active users. In addition, there are still a good 1.5 billion inactive accounts . According to IT security firm Hudson Rockcontains the published sample correct data. To date, there has been no official statement from Twitter or Musk personally. But even if the company buys back the data, it cannot prevent an investigation by the data protection authority.
IS TWITTER STILL SAFE?
On December 30, 2022, authorities announced they were investigating a January 2022 Twitter data breach. It involved 5.4 million user accounts and their associated Twitter IDs, phone numbers, and email addresses. Due to a vulnerability in Twitter’s login process, the attackers were able to read data in bulk. The tech giant reported this vulnerability and closed it five days later.
