Compromised! Over 32 mn Twitter passwords reportedly hacked

Back in 2012, over 100 million LinkedIn passwords were hacked, which recently also led to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's other social accounts getting compromised. It seems that Twitter is next in line, as it has been reported that passwords for around 32 million Twitter accounts have been hacked and leaked by a hacker named 'Tessa88@exploit.im'. Not only the account credentials of general users have leaked via the hack. The Twitter co-founder Evan Williams's account was also hacked for brief period. However, the hack was done by someone else.

A website going by the name LeakedSource claims that it has received a copy of the users' information from 'Tessa88@exploit.im,' which is the same alias used by the hacker(s) who reportedly hacked Russian social network VK earlier this month, as reported by TechCrunch.

The LeakedSource website adds that hacked Twitter data is comprised of 32,888,300 records, including not only email addresses but also usernames and passwords. Most of the passwords are said to be in plain text. The site adds that it asked 15 users to verify their passwords from the data leak, and all of them confirmed.

While the details on how the hack was implemented are not yet known, LeakedSource says that the hacker might have collected data using malware affecting popular browsers like Firefox and Chrome, or might even have picked up details directly from Twitter.

It also said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's account credentials were not included in the leak.

On the other hand, Twitter says that their systems have not been breached, as reported by TechCrunch. "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," said a Twitter spokesperson.

Also read: Twitter co-founder Evan Williams's account hacked

Also read: Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter, Pinterest accounts hacked