Up to 55,000 Twitter accounts are said to be hacked, reports indicate.
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The hack is said to have been carried out by a group affiliated with infamous ‘hacktivists’ Anonymous.
Details of up to 55,000 Twitter user accounts were said to have been posted on pastebin.com, according to Mashable.
Airdemon.net first broke the story and claims several celebrity Twitter users are among the user accounts compromised, although no details on who exactly.
Twitter denied the huge number of hacked accounts, however, insisting: “the list of alleged accounts & passwords consists of more than 20,000 duplicates. Also suspended spam accounts & incorrect login credentials” @twittercomms wrote on its official account 4 hours ago.
Many of the usernames and passwords are not linked making them virtually useless and appear to be spam, Twitter also believe.
However, @twittercomms added: “re: Allegedly exposed credentials: We’re looking into the situation and have pushed out password resets to potentially affected accounts.”
The micro blogging site has sent out password resets to accounts possibly affected and has urged users to visit the Help Center to change user passwords.
This is not the first time Twitter has had a brush with data breaches – in 2009 hackers also gained access to the popular site, prompting the US Federal Trade Commission to give it a slap on the wrists, demanding it introduce a “comprehensive” security program or face severe fines if it failed to do so.
