Not long ago hackers were caught selling 200 million Twitter user data in an online forum for USD 2 . Twitter finally opened its voice and confirmed that the data was not stolen from its system.
In its official statement, Twitter said it had conducted an investigation and found no evidence that the data was obtained by exploiting security holes in its system.
"Based on the information and intelligence analyzed to investigate this matter, there is no evidence that any data sold online was obtained by exploiting a security flaw in Twitter's systems," Twitter said in a statement, as quoted by Bleeping Computer, Friday (1/13/2023). ).
"The data is likely a collection of data that is already publicly available online through several different sources."
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In August 2022, Twitter confirmed a data leak belonging to 5.4 million users was due to hackers exploiting a security flaw. The vulnerability, which allowed hackers to associate email addresses and phone numbers with Twitter accounts, was patched in January 2022.
Now, Twitter says that the leaked dataset containing email addresses belonging to 200 million Twitter users sold in online forums was not obtained by exploiting the patched security hole.
"The 200 million dataset cannot be correlated with any previously reported incidents or any data derived from exploitation of Twitter's systems," he explained.
The Elon Musk-owned company added that they are in touch with Data Protection Authorities and other data regulatory bodies in several countries to provide additional details regarding this alleged incident.
Twitter itself has been investigated several times by regulators due to data leak cases. In December 2022, Irish regulators announced they would launch an investigation after reports surfaced of the leaking of the personal data of 5.4 million Twitter users.
Two years earlier, Irish regulators fined Twitter €450,000 for failing to report a data leak within 72 hours, as required by the European Union.