Users worried about being caught up in the recent leak of more than 32 million Twitter login credentials should already know if they’ve been hacked. Twitter confirmed on Friday that it was notifying users whose valid login credentials were recently being passed around on the so-called ‘dark web.’ The account credential leak became public after LeakedSource published the collection on Wednesday. LeakedSource maintains a database of nearly two billion online account credential leaks.
Twitter said in a blog post that it had obtained the leaked data, and matched it against their records. As a result it identified “a number of Twitter accounts” for “extra protection.” Affected accounts have been locked and their passwords must be reset by the account holder. “If your Twitter information was impacted by any of the recent issues...then you have already received an email,” Twitter said.
The impact on you: This latest login credential leak is another reminder how critically important it is to maintain a valid email address for receiving password reset notifications. As we discussed on Thursday, make sure you are using a password manager, that you are not reusing passwords on multiple sites, and that you enable two-factor authentication whenever possible. Twitter offered similar advice in its recent blog post.
How big was it?
The total number of legitimate leaked account credentials is unclear, but Twitter confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that millions of users were affected. The company also told the WSJ that millions more of the published credentials were not valid.
Confirming what LeakedSource reported earlier, Twitter said it was confident the breach did not come from its servers. The company said the credentials were “amassed from combining information from other recent breaches, malware on victim machines that are stealing passwords for all sites, or a combination of both.”