55,000 Twitter Accounts Hacked, You Should Probably Change Your Password
Tens of thousands of Twitter accounts have been compromised in a recent hack attack in which more than 55,000 passwords were leaked and posted to Pastebin by anonymous hackers. Most of the accounts supposedly belonged to spammers, and there were many duplicate entries, Twitter officials pointed out, but to play it safe, you should probably change your Twitter password today.
"The list of alleged accounts & passwords consists of more than 20,000 duplicates. Also suspended spam accounts & incorrect login credentials," Twitter stated in a tweet.
Image Source: Flickr (Rosaura Ochoa)
In a follow-up tweet, Twitter said it's "looking into the situation and have pushed out password resets to potentially affected accounts," which would indicate that at least some of them belong to legitimate users with valid login credentials.
MSNBC pinged Twitter for more information and and received back essentially the same information, though Twitter did add that "For those who are concerned that their account may have been compromised, we suggest resetting your passwords." We'll take it one step further and say that if you're using the same password for multiple accounts -- Twitter and Gmail, for example -- change those up as well, and preferably start using different login credentials.
"The list of alleged accounts & passwords consists of more than 20,000 duplicates. Also suspended spam accounts & incorrect login credentials," Twitter stated in a tweet.
Image Source: Flickr (Rosaura Ochoa)
In a follow-up tweet, Twitter said it's "looking into the situation and have pushed out password resets to potentially affected accounts," which would indicate that at least some of them belong to legitimate users with valid login credentials.
MSNBC pinged Twitter for more information and and received back essentially the same information, though Twitter did add that "For those who are concerned that their account may have been compromised, we suggest resetting your passwords." We'll take it one step further and say that if you're using the same password for multiple accounts -- Twitter and Gmail, for example -- change those up as well, and preferably start using different login credentials.
