Twitter has launched a probe into claims of a huge data breach after reports that usernames and passwords of nearly 33 million users were posted for sale online by hackers.
It comes amid several high-profile account hacks including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, singer Katy Perry and the official NFL feed.
Michael Coates, Twitter’s trust and information security officer, said: “We’ve investigated claims of Twitter @names and passwords available on the dark web, and we’re confident the information was not obtained from a hack of Twitter’s servers.”
“The purported Twitter @names and passwords may have been amassed from combining information from other recent breaches, malware on victim machines that are stealing passwords for all sites, or a combination of both.
“Regardless of origin, we’re acting swiftly to protect your Twitter account.
“In each of the recent password disclosures, we cross-checked the data with our records. As a result, a number of Twitter accounts were identified for extra protection. Accounts with direct password exposure were locked and require a password reset by the account owner.”
Twitter refused to say how many accounts were affected but the figure is reportedly close to 33 million.
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