Twitter Says Breached Accounts Mostly Spam And Duplicates

Twitter has moved to ease fears over a data breach that saw thousands of user names and passwords posted on Pastebin.

The micro-blogging service admitted to TechWeekEurope that the hack had taken place, but said that the majority of accounts affected were in fact spam or duplicate profiles.

Only spammers should fear

“We are currently looking into the situation. In the meantime, we have pushed out password resets to accounts that may have been affected,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechWeekEurope. “For those who are concerned that their account may have been compromised, we suggest resetting your passwords.”

Despite five Pastebin pages being necessary to publish all of the stolen account details, Twitter attempted to play down the hack.

“It’s worth noting that, so far, we’ve discovered that the list of alleged accounts and passwords found on Pastebin consists of more than 20,000 duplicates, many spam accounts that have already been suspended and many login credentials that do not appear to be linked (that is, the password and username are not actually associated with each other),” said the spokesperson.

Twitter has long recognised a need to improve its security and held a recruitment drive in 2010 in an effort to shore up its defences. It added an additional layer of protection by rolling out HTTPS to its users to prevent hackers eavesdropping and told users to change their passwords following the theft of 220,000 account details from online publisher Gawker Media.

Current Labour leader Ed Milliband suffered an embarrassing incident prior to the 2010 General Election when his hacked account was used to send spam tweets promising improved sexual performance.

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