LONDON: Hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum, a security researcher said on Wednesday.

The breach will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxxing, Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity-monitoring firm Hudson Rock, wrote on LinkedIn. He called it one of the most significant leaks he had seen.

Twitter has not commented on the report, which Gal first posted about on social media on Dec 24, nor responded to inquiries about the breach since that date. It was not clear what action, if any, Twitter has taken to investigate or remediate the issue.

Troy Hunt, creator of breach-notification site Have I Been Pwned, viewed the leaked data and said on Twitter that it seemed pretty much what it’s been described as.

Published in Dawn, january 6th, 2023