Twitter Users Hit by State-Sponsored Attackers

On Friday, a number of Twitter users received a notification from the social networking platform, explaining that their accounts had been the target of state-sponsored actors. Unsurprisingly, the supposed targets of these attacks were mass surveillance researchers and security professionals.

The incident was surprising for users of Twitter, as until the notifications went out at 17:30 EST, Twitters notification service regarding state-sponsored attacks had never before been seen, let alone mentioned by Twitter. Fortunately for those affected, Twitter assures in the notification email that they believe that only email addresses, IP addresses, and phone numbers could have been taken by a breach, and even then, could not confirm that any data had been taken. The compromising of a single social media account can be a big deal though, with some users holding multiple Twitter accounts for different purposes, and using personal details and account credentials could yield access to other sites too.

Twitter just emailed me . "..your Twitter account .. may have been targeted by state-sponsored actors" pic.twitter.com/0t6V8lRHgG

— Anne Roth (@Anne_Roth) December 12, 2015

Twitter is yet to release any further information beyond the notification letter, however people have begun theorizing what could be taking place, with Jacob Appelbaum, a key member of the Tor Project taking the effort to keep up a list of sorts of the individuals receiving the notifications. He questioned in a tweet whether Twitter had been “owned” or hacked. More information and theorycrafting on the topic has come under the hashtag #StateSponsoredActors which also discusses Twitter’s blocking of a number of accounts used through the Tor service.

Twitter is not the only online service with warnings against incidents with state attackers, with Google having one in place and Facebook having launched theirs back in October, which immediately identified attacks on US Government employees.