Twitter has warned that a number of users may be unknown victims of government hacking a.k.a the culprits of this hacking may be state sponsored actors.
For the first time, the social site has come forward regarding the illicit government activities that influence peoples’ privacy.
An email from Twitter warned users that their respective account information may have been compromised. The culprits are tunneling into the personal data that twitter began collecting recently.
It can’t be said how many users are affected by this yet.
A Canadian Non-Profit organization called Coldhak received an email from twitter stating the following
“We believe that these hackers (possibly linked with a government) may have been trying to requisite information such as email addresses, IP addresses, and/or phone numbers. Some doubts suggest that they may government-sanctioned hacking”
In this day n age of information, where information is now a form of a currency, this news is not too far fetched. Especially, after the revelations made by Edward Snowden. So in brief, government doing the hacking is nothing new.
“At this time, we have no affirmation of them obtaining your account information, but we’re actively investigating this matter. We wish we had more to share, but at the moment we find ourselves incapable of sharing much of the information.” the twitter mail stated further.
Chinese and the North Korean government are thought to be the masterminds behind this issue. Previously too, their government was thought to be responsible for hacking cyber networks of western civilization. As pointed out by several security experts, last year’s hack of sony network that caused a catastrophic leakage of data was backed by North Korea.
Pyongyang of course, has denied every allegation.
Seeing the ease of hacking, James Lewis, a security expert at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC have deduced that there might be a government backing to the recent hacking. “When it comes to resources, Government sanctioned hacking attacks are much more proficient then criminally motivated and funded ones,” he said.