Researchers suggest that a widespread cache of email addresses related to roughly 200 million users is probably a revised version of the larger cache with duplicate entries deleted from the end of 2022 when hackers are selling stolen data from 400 million Twitter users.
A flaw in a Twitter API that appeared from June 2021 until January 2022, allowed attackers to submit personal details like email addresses and obtain the corresponding Twitter account. Attackers used the vulnerability to harvest information from the network before it could be fixed.
The bug also exposed the link between Twitter accounts, which are frequently pseudonymous, numbers and addresses linked to them, potentially identifying users even if it did not allow hackers to obtain passwords or other sensitive data like DMs.
The email addresses for a few listed Twitter profiles were accurate, according to the data that Bleeping Computer downloaded. It also discovered that the data had duplicates. Ryushi, the hacker, asked Twitter to pay him $200,000 (£168,000) in exchange for providing the data and deleting it. The information follows a warning from Hudson Rock last week regarding unsubstantiated claims made by a hacker that he had access to the emails and phone numbers of 400 million Twitter users.
Troy Hunt, the founder of the security news website Have I Been Pwned, also investigated the incident and tweeted his findings "Acquired 211,524,284 distinct email addresses; appears to be primarily what has been described," he said.
The social network has not yet responded to the enormous disclosure, but the cache of information makes clear how serious the leak is and who might be most at risk as a consequence. Social media companies have consistently and quickly minimized previous data scrapes of this nature and have dismissed them as not posing substantial security risks for years.
