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Last August, social media company Twitter reported that a vulnerability in its API systems allowed threat actors to exploit user data. The bug provided access to email addresses and phone numbers linked to users’ Twitter accounts.
The hacker boasts of ‘scraping’ partial data of 400 million Twitter users, including former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British broadcaster, and celebrity Piers Morgan.
Rob Potter, the co-founder of Australian cyber security company Internet 2.0, noted that scraping is where threat actors find a system that was misconfigured to provide information and request data from it. He adds, “There’s some bug that allowed them to scrape without limitation, so they could just continuously scrape.”
An update in Twitter’s code in June 2021 caused the bug and was patched when it was discovered. However, it was only a year after the social media giant identified that a threat actor already took advantage of the bug before Twitter even addressed it.
Security experts mentioned that the hacker obtained no sensitive information from the former prime minister, but it is not the same with the broadcaster. Allegedly. Morgan’s Twitter account was linked to his email address and phone number.
This was no surprise when Morgan’s Twitter account recently tweeted obscene messages targeting singer Ed Sheeran and even the late Queen Elizabeth. Morgan’s Twitter account has been wiped to remove these tweets. His official Twitter account Piers Morgan Uncensored noted, “In case you were wondering, @piersmorgan has been hacked. Any chance of getting him back, @elonmusk?”
Journalist Ailish Delaney reported that the hacker addressed Twitter CEO Elon Musk and reached out to the information security site Bleeping Computer.
Delaney added, “The hacker told information security site Bleeping Computer they are trying to sell Twitter the data for $A297,000 and will then delete it, or they will sell copies to multiple people for $A89,000 a sale.”
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