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Yet another report has emerged that your social media password is at the risk of being sold on the dark web. And this time, the source is reportedly Twitter.
A blog post published by Leaked Source – which has built a database of login data that has been leaked or stolen – claims more than 32 million Twitter login names and passwords are up for sale online.
This comes after Leaked Source recently revealed around 167 million users’ account details were stolen from LinkedIn.
Twitter has denied its systems were breached by hackers with the company’s security boss Michael Coates confirming it was working with Leaked Source to obtain more information.
We securely store all passwords w/ bcrypt. We are working with @leakedsource to obtain this info & take additional steps to protect users.
— Michael Coates ஃ (@_mwc) June 9, 2016
A spokesman for Twitter told TechCrunch that its systems were not hacked adding: “We are confident that these usernames and credentials were not obtained by a Twitter data breach – our systems have not been breached.
“In fact, we’ve been working to help keep accounts protected by checking our data against what’s been shared from recent other password leaks.”
Leaked Source claims that evidence of Twitter credentials of millions of users were provided by a dark web user going by the name “Tessa88@exploit.im”.
It wrote in a blog post: “We have very strong evidence that Twitter was not hacked, rather the consumer was.
“These credentials however are real and valid. Out of 15 users we asked, all 15 verified their passwords.”
It is not yet clear whether the list is genuine but Leaked Source suggests users’ data was stolen by malware – based on the fact that many of the stolen passwords were displayed in plaintext.
“The explanation for this is that tens of millions of people have become infected by malware, and the malware sent every saved username and password from browsers like Chrome and Firefox back to the hackers from all websites including Twitter,” Leaked Source added in its blog.
LeakedSource said the list of Twitter data was being traded on the dark web for 10 bitcoins (£4,000).
Twitter recently posted on its support account that it is checking its data against recent password leaks.
To help keep people safe and accounts protected, we've been checking our data against what's been shared from recent password leaks.
— Twitter Support (@Support) June 6, 2016
Data breach or not, if this has got you worried, then it’s better to stay safe and change your password immediately.
