A threat actor is attempting to sell the user data of 400 million Twitter users, which contains private information of celebrities, politicians, and companies, according to a report made by the cybercrime intelligence group Hudson Rock.
The likes of Donald Trump, who served as the 45th President of the United States, Vitalik Buterin, who created Ethereum, Kevin O’Leary, who is a celebrity on the television show Shark Tank, and Mark Cuban, who is worth a billion dollars, are among the prominent celebrities.
A Threat Actor Offers to Sell Personal Information via Twitter
According to Hudson Rock, the threat actor stated that the data was stolen earlier this year by exploiting a vulnerability that existed within Twitter. The database has information about the Twitter users whose accounts were breached, such as their email addresses, the dates they created their accounts, and their phone numbers.
The actor, who goes by the name Ryushi, has requested that the Twitter management team and its new owner, Elon Musk, make contact with particular accounts in order to negotiate a deal for an exclusive buy-out. This is done in order to avoid the wrong people from gaining access to the data.
Musk was warned by Ryushi that failing to comply with the GDPR might result in sanctions of up to $276 million, similar to what Facebook was had to pay when the data of more than 500 million people was breached. The message from the user:
Twitter or Elon Musk if you are reading this you are already risking a GDPR fine over 5.4m breach imaging the fine of 400m users breach. Your best option to avoid paying $276 million USD in GDPR breach fines like facebook did (due to 533m users being scraped) is to buy this data exclusively,
It’s Possible That Twitter Will Lose Users’ Trust
The threat actor brought attention to other problems that resulted from Twitter’s refusal to cooperate. Ryushi explained that if the data were sold to anybody else, it might put famous people and politicians at risk of being attacked by crypto scams, phishing, doxxing, and other forms of online harassment.
Ryushi made the point that people might fully lose trust in the site if they learn about the breach because Musk was already standing on weak footing for changing Twitter’s policy.
In the meantime, some users of Twitter are guessing that Ryushi’s claim that he has access to the private data of 400 million accounts is not real, but Hudson Rock is of the opinion that this is not the case.
“Please Note:At this stage it is not possible to fully verify that there are indeed 400,000,000 users in the database. From an independent verification the data itself appears to be legitimate and we will follow up with any developments..
According to independent verification, the data itself looks to be real, and the cybercrime intelligence company claimed that they will continue to keep track of any changes.