SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Twitter said
Friday it had been hit by a
“sophisticated” cyber attack similar to
those that recently hit major Western
news outlets, and that the passwords
of about 250,000 users were stolen. “This attack was not the work of
amateurs, and we do not believe it
was an isolated incident,” Twitter
information security director Bob Lord
said in a blog post. Lord referred to an “uptick in large-
scale security attacks aimed at US
technology and media companies” as
he told of Twitter detecting attempts
this week to get unauthorized access
to data in the firm’s network. The attack coincided with the
revelation of several high-profile
security breaches. The New York
Times and The Wall Street Journal said
this week that they had been hacked,
and pointed to hackers from China. Twitter did not confirm the source of
the intrusion. But Lord noted that “the attackers
were extremely sophisticated, and we
believe other companies and
organizations have also been recently
similarly attacked.” He said that Twitter shut down a live
attack as it was in process. However, Lord added, cyber attackers
may have gotten usernames, email
addresses, passwords and other data. As a precaution, Twitter invalidated
passwords of accounts at issue and
sent people email messages telling
them to create new passwords.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/02/twitter-hit-by-sophisticated-cyber-attack/

Oh dear, no wonder some people complained about Twitter having server issues.