A quarter of a million Twitter accounts have been hacked in the latest in a line of cyber attacks on major companies.
Twitter’s information security director Bob Lord said 250,000 users’ passwords had been stolen, along with usernames, emails and other data, though the passwords have now been invalidated.
Lord said the attack “was not the work of amateurs” and appeared similar to attacks on the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in recent weeks.
“The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organisations have also been recently similarly attacked,” he said.
“For that reason we felt that it was important to publicise this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the internet safer for all users.”
