San Francisco, Feb 2: Twitter said Friday that hackers, in the latest online attack, may have gained access to information on a quarter of a million of its more than 200 million active users.
The social media giant said in a blog posting that earlier this week it detected attempts to gain access to its user data. It shut down one attack moments after it was detected.
But it discovered that the attackers may have gained access to usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users. Twitter has reset the pilfered passwords and sent emails advising users that they'll have to create a new one.
"This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident. The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked," the blog said.
