A recent report by Bleeping Computer reveals that a hacker managed to exploit a vulnerability that was patched in January and took over a database of more than 5.4 million user accounts.
Increasingly we use social networks to find out about current affairs and to communicate with our friends and family and this implies that we expose not only our life but also our personal data and, therefore, these are susceptible to being hacked by cybercriminals.
This is precisely what has happened to Twitter, as we have just learned that the popular social network has been hacked and that, as a consequence, the data of more than 5 million users is in danger.
A hacker has accessed the data of more than 5 million Twitter users.
Twitter confirms the hacking of millions of accounts: this is what you must do to protect yours
According to The Verge, a recent report by Bleeping Computer reveals that a hacker managed to take advantage of a vulnerability discovered on Twitter earlier this year to get hold of a database of more than 5.4 million users of the social networkwhich he tried to sell on a hacker forum for $30,000.
This fact has been confirmed by Twitter itself through a post in your privacy centerin which he states that this vulnerability was already patched at the time, but that before this happened a hacker managed to take advantage of it to get the phone numbers and email addresses of more than 5 million accounts on the social network and that is already taking care of notify all affected users.
As Twitter explains, this hack mainly affects accounts that use a pseudonym as a namesince the disclosure of telephone numbers and email addresses the identity of these users would have been exposed and for this reason, those responsible for the social network recommend that you do not add “a publicly known phone number or email address to your Twitter account.”
In any case, if despite not having received a warning from Twitter, you want to protect your account against future hacks, we recommend that you turn on two-step verification so that you get a notice when someone other than you try to access your account.